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Alabama Department of Corrections
Correctional Medical Services, Louisiana Correctional Services,
MHM, Naphcare, Prison Health Services, Wexford
September 24, 2009 Huntsville Times
The mother of an inmate who died a few days after entering a state prison was
awarded $750,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit against prison officials and a
mental health provider. The money was awarded to Mary Barksdale, the mother of
Farron Barksdale, 32, of Athens who died Aug. 20, 2007, after he was found
unconscious in his Kilby Prison cell. "We reached what we believed to be a fair
settlement in light of what we knew of the troubling circumstances surrounding
Mr. Barksdale's demise while in state custody," Sarah Geraghty, senior attorney
for the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, said Wednesday. "Some
facts surrounding the death, however, remain a mystery to this day due to the
department's policy against releasing records on deaths in custody." Jake
Watson, a Huntsville attorney who also represented Mary Barksdale, said
Wednesday, "In light of all the circumstances, I think that was the best
settlement." The state Department of Corrections was not a defendant in the
case. According to the settlement agreement filed in U.S. District Court in
Montgomery, former Kilby Warden Arnold Holt was ordered to pay $300,000 to the
settlement, Dr. Joseph McGinn of MHM Correctional Services in Vienna, Va., was
to contribute $370,000, and Dr. Arnold Holt of Prison Health Services of
Brentwood, Tenn., was to pay $80,000. MHM provides mental health services for
the Department of Corrections. The suit alleged that Barksdale, who suffered
from schizophrenia, died because of "the deliberate indifference, medical
neglect and negligence" of the prison staff.
September 23, 2009 Huntsville Times
A wrongful death lawsuit filed by the mother of an inmate who died just 12 days
after entering prison has been settled with the state Department of Corrections,
her lawyers said Tuesday. Though the terms were not disclosed, the settlement
was also confirmed by state prison Commissioner Richard Allen. The suit was
filed in U.S. District Court in Montgomery on behalf of Mary Barksdale, the
mother of Farron Barksdale, 32, of Athens, who died Aug. 20, 2007, after he was
found unconscious in his Kilby Prison cell. Barksdale, who pleaded guilty to
capital murder in the shooting death of two Athens police officers, had been
transferred to the prison just three days earlier to begin serving a sentence of
life without parole. Mary Barksdale, who could not be reached for comment
Tuesday, was represented by Sarah Geraghty, an attorney for the Atlanta-based
Southern Center for Human Rights, and Huntsville attorney Jake Watson. Geraghty
and Watson confirmed that Mary Barksdale was awarded a cash settlement, but they
would not disclose the amount. The defendants in the suit were former Kilby
Warden Arnold Hold, Drs. Michael Robbins and Joseph McGinn, two unnamed
correctional officers, an unnamed medical worker and Vienna, Va., based MHM
Correctional Services. MHM provides mental health services for the Department of
Corrections. The suit alleged that Barksdale, who suffered from schizophrenia,
died because of "the deliberate indifference, medical neglect and negligence" of
the prison staff. "Mr. Barksdale was medicated with an unusually large dose of
psychotropic medications that made his body unable to withstand high
temperatures, confined to an isolation cell with a medically dangerous degree of
heat and left there without adequate monitoring," the complaint said. "He fell
into a coma and died." The complaint said Barksdale was not placed in Kilby's
mental health unit, which is air-conditioned. On the day he was found
unresponsive in his cell, the temperature in Montgomery was 106 degrees. Kilby
is located just east of Montgomery. On that day, the complaint said,
correctional officers found Barksdale in a coma, "snoring and moaning," with a
temperature of 103.1 degrees. He was taken to the hospital but never regained
consciousness after eight days. An autopsy said he died of pneumonia and
complications from hypothermia and a blood-clotting problem, and that bruises on
his upper body and hip did not contribute to his death. A state prison inmate
later wrote in an Oct. 24, 2008, letter to Montgomery County Circuit Judge
Eugene Reese that Barksdale was severely beaten by four prison guards. Allen
asked the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Corrections'
Department of Investigations and Intelligence to reopen the investigation into
Barksdale's death, but the results of that probe have never been released. The
Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Department of Corrections must
comply with the state's Open Records law and make records available on crimes
committed within prisons. The Southern Center for Human Rights had sued over
that issue. Despite the high court's 5-0 ruling, Allen said Friday state
attorneys may ask for a rehearing.
June 8, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Alabama's prison commissioner says the state will remove about 250 inmates from
the private prison where two men recently escaped amid a string of security
failures. However, Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen said Monday that money
- not the threat of additional escapes - was behind the decision. In an
interview Monday with The Associated Press, Allen said his agency can't afford
to continue housing 250 inmates at the Perry County Detention Center. An
executive at LCS Corrections Inc., which runs the prison, said he knew of the
state's plan. He said the company was told the state could place twice as many
inmates at the private prison next year if lawmakers approve funding.
November 11, 2008 Huntsville Times
New allegations in a federal lawsuit accuse the state of punishing a retired
Army colonel for being a whistleblower" because he reported mistreatment of
inmates at Limestone Correctional Facility. Dr. Larry Camp, a dentist, and
Sabrina Martindale, a dental technician, both from Huntsville, were fired in
early 2004 after they complained about the "delivery of unnecessarily brutal and
painful dentistry" on inmates by Dr. Michael West, their supervisor. The two are
seeking compensatory and punitive damages from Correctional Medical Services
Inc.; state prison Commissioner Richard Allen; Ruth Naglich, the Corrections
Department's associate commissioner of health services; and Laura Ferrell, the
department's medical systems administrator. The updated complaint accused
Naglich of slander and CMS of negligence. Allen, who was not commissioner when
Camp and Martindale complained of the mistreatment of inmates, declined to
comment on the case Monday. Corrections Department spokesman Brian Corbett said
the agency would have no comment, but its legal department believes the
accusations will be proven false. According to the complaint, the mistreatment
included the reuse of unsterilized equipment between inmate-patients. David
Long-Daniels, an Atlanta attorney representing Camp and Martindale, said West's
practices were especially dangerous because many inmates at Limestone have HIV
and/or hepatitis. West "liked one instrument in particular," Long-Daniels said
Monday. "He would use it in extracting teeth. He would use it before the
anesthesia had time to take effect, and if an inmate cried out he would tell him
he had to get out of the chair." At the time, West was director of dental
services for the state Department of Corrections under the agency's health
services contracts with Prison Health Services Inc. of Brentwood, Tenn., and
NaphCare Inc. of Birmingham. Camp reported West's conduct to Prison Health
Services while Martindale reported it to the state Board of Dental Examiners.
Ferrell, who was Prison Health Services' regional vice president and now works
for the Corrections Department, fired Camp less than a month later. Ferrell,
whose husband, Jerry Ferrell, is the longtime warden at the Foundation
Correctional Facility in Atmore, also fired Martindale, according to the
complaint. The state Dental Board sanctioned West on May 5, 2005, for his
failure to comply with recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention's Recommended Infection-Control Practices for Dentistry. According to
the complaint, Ferrell testified on West's behalf at that hearing. After a new
$228 million prison health contract was awarded to St. Louis-based CMS last
October, both Camp and Martindale reapplied for their old jobs at Limestone.
According to the complaint, Camp interviewed with CMS for a staff dentist
position at Limestone on Oct. 12, 2007. CMS' dental recruiter told the
Corrections Department had to approve all contracts, but he "indicated that this
was a mere formality and that he had approved his (Camp's) hire." Camp said he
was later told that the Corrections Department had denied his application.
Martindale was rehired for her job in October 2007 but told she would start once
Camp began treating prisoners. A week after her hiring, she was informed by
Limestone that neither she not Camp would be working at there and CMS employees
"were told not to ask any questions." Ken Fields, a spokesman for CMS, called
the lawsuit "frivolous and not based on the facts." "We look forward to
addressing these assertions based on the facts in court," he said. "We can tell
you that we recruit health care professionals based on their ability to deliver
quality services in the corrections environment." The Corrections Department
declined to comment on West's whereabouts, and Fields said CMS does not comment
on personnel matters.
September 9, 2007 Huntsville Times
The Alabama Medicaid Agency will get a $3.8 million contract with a company
with a checkered past, but a political cloud may linger over the transaction.
And the state Department of Corrections will get a $233.73 million contract with
a St. Louis company that bid $6 million more than the losing bidder for inmate
health care services. Democrats insinuate that politics may have played a role
in ACS Heritage Inc.'s winning the Medicaid contract even though its bid was
$500,000 higher than the next company. And the firm that won the prison
contract, Correctional Medical Services, Inc., was represented by former
Republican Lt. Gov. Steve Windom, a lobbyist with close ties to Gov. Bob Riley.
September 7, 2007 Birmingham News
The Legislative Contract Review Committee on Thursday delayed implementation
of a $223 million prison health-care contract after an official with a company
that bid $9 million less questioned the process. The panel also delayed a $3.7
million Medicaid contract to computerize medical records after lawmakers
questioned the company's performance in other states. The Contract Review
Committee reviews state agency contracts. Committee members can delay the
contracts for 45 days but do not have the power to cancel them. The Department
of Corrections, after taking proposals, selected Correctional Medical Services
Inc. of St. Louis to provide medical care to Alabama's more than 20,000 inmates.
Another company, Wexford Health Sources, had submitted the low bid that was
about $9 million cheaper than Correctional Medical Services'. Rep. Alvin Holmes,
D-Montgomery, and other legislators asked Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen
why the department had not selected the low bidder. Allen said Correctional
Medical Services scored slightly higher on bid reviews, which take quality of
care into account. "I don't know that Mr. Holmes would go to the cheapest doctor
in town," Allen said after the meeting. Lawmakers also questioned that the
prison staff who reviewed the bids included several former employees of CMS.
Allen said none had worked for the company in at least six years. "I have full
confidence in these people. There was no politics involved in this selection,"
Allen said. But Michael Davis, a lawyer representing Wexford, said company
officials wanted to meet with the commissioner before the contract was
finalized. Davis said company officials had questions about how bidders' scores
were determined.
September 6, 2007 Huntsville
Times
The state corrections commissioner was questioned by
legislators Wednesday over a $233.73 million contract for health care for
Alabama's nearly 26,000 inmates. Commissioner Richard Allen is seeking approval
of a three-year contract with St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc.
CMS would take over a contract now held by Prison Health Services Inc., of
Brentwood, Tenn. Sen. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, a retired physician,
endorsed the CMS contract, which would have two potential one-year renewals. "I
have a keen interest in (prisons), particularly the health care," Griffith told
the committee. "We're rapidly moving into the baby boomers going through the
prison system just like we're going through it outside the prison system."
Griffith said health care for convicts is a "major, major cost factor" for the
state, but he added that "we're capping it with this contract and I think it's
well thought out." The committee has the power to delay the contract for 45 days
but cannot stop it from being enacted. Some members of the Joint Legislative
Contract Review Committee questioned Allen about members of his staff who
formerly worked for the two private companies and were involved in the selection
process for CMS. A third company that submitted a proposal, Pittsburgh-based
Wexford Health Sources, was represented by an attorney who said he will ask for
an explanation of the grading process when the committee meets again today.
Allen acknowledged that Wexford's bid was about $6 million lower than CMS. "We
evaluated the contracts very carefully," said Allen. "All the bidders were told
that price would be 40 percent of the score and other things - innovations, cost
savings, those types of things - would be scored 60 percent." Allen said Wexford
scored third. Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Gadsden, said he was concerned that
Department of Corrections employees who formerly worked for CMS and PHS were on
the team that graded proposals submitted by the three companies. But Allen
defended the process, calling prison health care "a very narrow specialty." "If
you look at the resumes of these (DOC) people, they have worked for several
companies, not just this company (CMS)," he said. "Nobody in our department has
worked for this company in the last six or seven years. They've also worked for
PHS. They've also worked for about a dozen other companies. They go back and
forth between the companies and state service."
August 29, 2007 The Huntsville Times
The Alabama Department of Corrections said Tuesday that it will transfer 134
male inmates from a private Louisiana prison to the Limestone Correctional
Facility as part of a cost-cutting measure. Prisons Commissioner Richard Allen
said the transfer is the first of several required to return more than 1,100
Alabama convicts who are housed out of state. "In an attempt to save taxpayer
dollars and eliminate our budget shortfall, we plan to return all out-of-state
inmates to Alabama by year's end," Allen said in a prepared statement. "This
move will allow us to save an estimated $10 million annually on rented bed
space." Prior to Tuesday's transfer, 294 male inmates were housed at the West
Carroll Detention Center in Epps, La., at a cost of $26.75 per inmate, per day.
Alabama inmates are also kept at the J.B. Evans Correctional Facility, South
Louisiana Correctional Center and Perry County Detention Center, all owned and
operated by Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections Services.
August 17, 2007 Tennessean
America Service Group Inc. said Thursday that its Prison Health Services
subsidiary would lose its contract with the Alabama Department of Corrections.
The contract expires on Oct. 31. PHS provides medical services to inmates.
Brentwood-based America Service Group said it would update its fourth-quarter
earnings estimate later. It had projected revenues from a renewed contract of
$12.3 million in the three months ending Dec. 31.
July 12, 2007 All American Patriots
The Alabama Department of Corrections will put 5,763 acres of unproductive
and money-losing properties up for sale, bring state inmates back from Louisiana
prisons and put more inmates to work. Governor Bob Riley and Corrections
Commission Richard Allen said Wednesday that proceeds generated from the land
sales during the coming year will go toward prison infrastructure improvements
and not operating expenses. All property to be sold will be appraised,
advertised and sold through a public process to the highest bidder. Such a
process was used earlier this year when 540 acres of the Farquhar State Cattle
Ranch near Greensboro was sold for more than $1.6 million, which is higher than
its appraised value of $1.4 million. The properties being put up for sale are:
1,851 acres of the 2,215 acres at Red Eagle Honor Farm in Montgomery The
remaining 3,869 acres of the Farquhar State Cattle Ranch An empty and unused
16,000-square foot building on South Union Street in Montgomery 32 acres in
Wetumpka on Highway 231 North 10 acres at the old Kilby prison in Montgomery All
the properties are either unneeded or losing money. The Farquhar State Cattle
Ranch, for example, has lost approximately $377,000 during the past two fiscal
years and has lost almost $60,000 in the first six months of the current fiscal
year. "These properties are a financial drain on the taxpayers and aren't
needed," said Governor Riley. "It makes no sense to hold on to them. We will
sell them, relieve this burden on the taxpayers and use the money for some
long-needed improvements to correctional facilities." The Department of
Corrections expects the sale of the properties will bring in up to $22 million.
This is not the first time land owned by the Department of Corrections has been
sold. In addition to the sale earlier this year of 540 acres at the cattle
ranch, more than 630 acres of Corrections property was sold through the bid
process in 2003 and 2004 for $3.8 million. Governor Riley said the sale of idle
land would not be limited to the Department of Corrections, noting that several
agencies, including the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, own
properties that may be sold. The Governor's office is working with state
agencies to determine what property they own is unneeded and could be sold. In
addition to selling unneeded property, the Department of Corrections will
terminate its contracts with two Louisiana-based companies and return
approximately 1,300 male and female inmates from private prisons in Louisiana.
All inmates in Louisiana will be back in Alabama by the end of November. That
move is expected to save the Corrections Department almost $10 million.
April 16, 2007 The Press-Register
Some members of a legislative oversight committee contend that Gov. Bob Riley's
administration broke the law on three no-bid contracts by failing to submit them
to the panel months ago. "If you have got a law, all departments in the Riley
administration have to follow the law," said state Rep. Alvin Holmes,
D-Montgomery, a committee member. "The same law applied to Don Siegelman that
applies to the Riley administration." During Riley's 2002 campaign for a first
term, the Republican blasted then-Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat, for his
administration's handling of no-bid contracts. Ken Wallis, legal advisor to
Riley, said recently that the administration is "absolutely" following state law
regarding all contracts, including the three questioned by some lawmakers. One
of the three was an emergency contract -- for prison health services -- that was
used for four months before the administration submitted the permanent deal to
the committee. Panel members said they learned about the other two contracts
through reporters. The prison contract totaled more than $56 million, while each
of the others was for $60,000 or less.
July 27, 2006 AP
About 320 female Alabama prisoners being housed in Louisiana are being moved
to another prison in that state but one closer to Alabama. The women inmates had
been housed at a private prison at Basile in southwest Louisiana. They are being
moved to J.B. Evans Correctional Center in Newellton, La., which is on the
Louisiana-Mississippi line about 60 miles west of Jackson. The move brings the
inmates about two and a-half hours closer to the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women
in Wetumpka, prisons commissioner Richard Allen said Thursday. It also reduces
travel time for corrections officers. The Alabama Department of Corrections has
a contract with LCS Correctional Services to house the inmates to help reduce
overcrowded conditions at Tutwiler. The J.B. Evans Correctional Center opened in
1994 and is a medium security facility with the capacity of holding 440 inmates.
Allen said it will be used exclusively for the Alabama women prisoners. More
than 600 male inmates are also housed in private facilities in Louisiana because
of overcrowded conditions in Alabama prisons.
March 2, 2006 Birmingham News
In the recent letter "Partnerships can ease overcrowding," the executive
director of the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations
resorts to smoke and mirrors in promoting privatization as the answer to
Alabama's overcrowded prisons. He relies on dubious studies, some of which were
paid for by his boss - the for-profit private prison industry. The Association
of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations advocates nothing more than
a throwback to the convict lease system of the late 1800s, which was ended in
the early 1900s. Privatization has resulted in a "race to the bottom." You get
what you pay for, folks. For more information about this industry, visit our Web
site: www.PrivateCI.org. We don't make this stuff up. Ken Kopczynski, Executive
director, Private Corrections Institute
February 22, 2006 Pickens Herald
The Pickens County Commission in a press briefing last Tuesday after their
regular meeting questioned the state’s motives in housing several hundred
prisoners in Louisiana when they could easily house them at the Pickens County
Jail at a cheaper rate. County Attorney Buddy Kirk addressed the Herald with
four of the five commissioners present (Commissioners Earnest Summerville,
William Latham, Willie Colvin and Ted Ezelle were present; Tony Junkin was
absent) about the matter after the Commission became aware that the state had
moved 140 male prisoners from the Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Ala. to a
private prison over 300 miles away in Pine Prairie, La. The Commission has
contacted the Alabama County Commission Association about the matter, said Kirk,
to ask for their help in approaching state officials about this curious action.
Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama state prison system, told the
Associated Press last Monday that the state plans to move 500 inmates from the
Bibb County facility to the Pine Prairie Correctional Center in central
Louisiana, a private prison operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. The
sticking point for the Pickens County Commission is that not only is the state
having to carry the expense of transporting the prisoners to another state but
are willing to pay $29.50 a day per inmate to house them there. The state only
pays counties $1.75 per day to house state prisoners in county jails. “It
doesn’t seem right to the Commission,” said Kirk, who noted that the state will
virtually drive right by Pickens County from Bibb County to travel 300 miles to
Louisiana. Furthermore, Kirk said if a prisoner has to meet with his attorney,
it is a general rule that the state will have to pay that attorney’s expenses if
the prisoner is housed far away.
February 23, 2006 Montgomery Advertiser
The fact that incoming prison commissioner Richard Allen, who takes over next
week, has no previous experience in corrections has been widely noted. Given
Allen's demonstrated abilities throughout a distinguished career, there is no
reason Alabamians should be concerned about that. In fact, the fresh perspective
he will bring to the Department of Corrections is likely to be an asset. Allen
surely will be attuned to apparent conflicts of interest such as the one
involving a prison health care monitor. In that case, the Birmingham News
reported this week, a nurse hired by the department to monitor health care
delivered under a contract with an outside provider came directly from that
provider. One day he was working for the provider, and the next day he was being
paid to monitor the work of that provider. That was a dubious arrangement in
itself, but the situation was made even more questionable when the nurse
resigned his monitor's job with DOC after working only a few weeks to return to
his former employer. He has since rescinded the resignation and remains with
DOC. This is an unacceptable situation that cannot engender any confidence in
the proper delivery of health care to inmates or the proper oversight of health
care delivery by the prison system. In order to have any credibility, a monitor
cannot have such ties to the operator being monitored. Allen will have a stack
of problems on his desk when he walks in for his first day as commissioner on
Wednesday, foremost among them the chronic overcrowding of the prison system. As
he wrestles with that daunting challenge, however, he also must take a
newcomer's clear-eyed look at issues such as too-close connections between the
department and outside contractors.
February 18, 2006 Birmingham News
A nurse hired by the state prison system last month to
monitor its medical contract had until then worked for the company he was hired
to keep tabs on. After a few weeks on the job, nurse Brandon Kinard resigned
from the state to return to Prison Health Services, then rescinded his
resignation Friday. Despite earlier plans to go back to the company, Kinard will
remain a regional clinical manager with the Department of Corrections assigned
to make sure PHS does an adequate job, prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said. The
state pays Kinard a $59,000 annual salary. He is one of several regional
managers who oversee quality control, protocols and contract compliance,
specifically DOC's $143 million contract with PHS, a Tennessee-based company
that has come under scrutiny in several states on allegations of placing
economic interests above patient care. Kinard's boss at DOC, Associate
Commissioner Ruth Naglich, ultimately is in charge of making sure the company
lives up to its contract. She also has ties to PHS, where she was vice president
for sales and marketing before taking the state job. Kinard's employment falls
within a gray area of state ethics law, officials say. Attorneys who represent
prisoners treated by PHS say it's a conflict of interest even though it may be
legal. "I don't know if it violates any state laws. But effective monitoring of
a private company by the state Department of Corrections needs to be done by
people who are independent of the medical company and independent of the DOC,
and this is ..... something that would seem to prevent effective monitoring,"
said Joshua Lipman, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights.
Previous state monitoring efforts have resulted in DOC's withholding payments to
PHS because the company failed to fulfill minimal contract staffing levels. The
state withheld $1.2 million last year when monitors found the provider did not
have enough doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff in the prisons,
and later withheld $580,000 as a performance penalty. Kinard first worked for
PHS at Hamilton Aged and Infirm. He worked both as a director of nursing and in
an administrative position, making decisions about patient health care. He'd
been with the company since November 2003, when PHS received the Alabama
contract. He also had worked in prison medicine with companies that previously
contracted with the state. Kinard began his job at DOC the first week in
January. In early February, he submitted his resignation, effective Feb. 24, to
return to PHS. A day after The News contacted PHS about the situation, Kinard
rescinded his resignation, staying with the DOC job. Alabama ethics law prevents
state employees from immediately accepting jobs at companies they audited,
investigated or regulated for the state, said Hugh Evans, general counsel at the
Alabama Ethics Commission. There has not been a ruling on whether that includes
returning to jobs they came from. "Under the ethics law, if you are involved in
auditing, investigating or regulating a private entity, that would include
monitoring or awarding a contract to a private entity, you can't go to work for
them for two years," Evans said. However, he said, "The issue is somewhat
muddied, if that person is returning to the status quo. It could be a cause for
concern."
February 16, 2006 Montgomery Advertiser
How willing would you be to do business with a company with a record of
legal problems, even if it was the low bidder? Most Alabamians, we'd wager,
would have some reservations about that -- and Alabamians certainly should have
reservations about their state sending prison inmates to a private prison. For
years, the Advertiser has expressed serious concerns about the use of private
prisons. Nothing reported from the ones involved in state contracts has eased
those concerns. The Birmingham News reported this week that the Department of
Corrections has begun transferring male inmates to a private prison in Pine
Prairie, La. The prison is operated by Louisiana Corrections Service, which also
operates a facility in Basile, La., where Alabama has housed about 300 female
inmates since 2003. The reason for using these facilities is the chronic
overcrowding of Alabama's prison system, which is the subject of constant
litigation. The transfer of male inmates -- eventually about 500 of them -- is
an effort to ease the backlog in county jails of state inmates who haven't been
sent to state prisons because there is no space for them. The overcrowding
problem is at present intractable, given Alabama's sentencing structure and its
decades of failing to address the shortcomings of a system now bulging with
almost twice as many inmates as its facilities were designed to handle. LCS will
house the male inmates for $29.50 per day per inmate, but how much of a bargain
is that? There are important issues inherent in any private prison operation.
This is not someone's hobby; this is a for-profit enterprise. That's fine in
most pursuits; in fact, it is the core of the American economy. But
incarceration is a solemn obligation of the state. Depriving individuals of
liberty is serious business and the state, even though justified in doing so,
has an undeniable responsibility to those individuals. A for-profit prison has
financial considerations that a state facility does not. It has profit
expectations from its investors, and these could all too easily lead to
dangerous corner-cutting that compromises the safety of inmates and potentially
the public as well. Unlike the state, a private prison operator has no stake in
the rehabilitation of inmates vs. the mere warehousing of them. Add to those
concerns -- inherent in any private prison operation -- the legal troubles at
LSC facilities and it is easy to see why Alabamians should be uncomfortable with
this arrangement. Last week, the News reported, a former supervisor at Pine
Prairie was convicted of rights violations and witness tampering in the beating
of an inmate. Earlier, four guards at the Basile facility were indicted on
sexual abuse charges. Problems can occur at state prisons, of course, but there
the state has direct authority to act, to set employment standards and to
otherwise control the addressing of problems. That is largely lost when private
prisons are used. The private prison issue is not going to fade away. LCS is
working with officials in Perry County to open a private prison there. The
facility, located outside Uniontown, will be ready in a few months. The
Department of Corrections says there is no agreement for it to place prisoners
there, but clearly there will be great political pressure to do so. This is a
poor approach to prison issues. A far better one is broad reform of Alabama's
sentencing structure, which now sends to prison far too many people who could
serve their sentences in community-based corrections facilities with drug
treatment programs and work opportunities -- without presenting a significant
threat to the safety of the populace. Funneling non-violent offenders into
prisons is always costly and seldom productive. Absent this kind of reform of
the current system, inherently unsound practices such as the use of private
prisons will continue -- not because they are better, but because they are
cheaper.
February 16, 2006 Ledger-Enquirer
Tough on crime, or on taxpayers. Last week, Alabama's prison commissioner
went over the wall. And who could blame Commissioner Donal Campbell for
resigning? He had been given the literally impossible task of operating an
Alabama prison system with too many inmates and not nearly enough money. Not
only is he set up for failure, but he is also set up to go to jail himself for
not obeying court orders to relieve crowding. Of course, he can't build prisons
out of his own pocket, and the Alabama legislature isn't about to spend precious
tax dollars on inmates, so what could the commissioner do but throw up his hands
and walk away? "I wouldn't want that job," said Lynda Flynt, executive director
of the Alabama Sentencing Commission. She knows what she's talking about, having
worked closely with Campbell to alleviate crowding. Knowing they're going to
have a problem filling a position that includes perks such as being party to a
lawsuit, state officials are finally scrambling to do something. On Monday, the
state announced that it is going to send 500 state inmates to a private prison
in Louisiana. The private prison company there already houses more than 300
Alabama inmates. At $29.50 a day per inmate, that's going to cost Alabama
taxpayers about $24,000 a day. That's Alabama tax money that's flowing into the
Louisiana economy. If Alabama would build the prisons it needs (or consider
sentencing reforms that might ease the stress on the system) some of that cash
might stay home. Or some of it might be sent to Alabama counties that are
picking up a huge tab for housing state prisoners. As of last December, there
were about 100 state inmates being housed in Russell, Lee and Chambers County
jails. It costs counties about $30 a day to house a state prisoner, but the
state pays the counties about $1.75 a day. So housing those prisoners costs East
Alabama taxpayers more than a million dollars a year, while the state is sending
more than $8 million a year to Louisiana private prisons. If the Alabama
legislature is going to insist that this many people be in prison, then the
lawmakers have the moral responsibility to see that there is space to house the
inmates. If you're going to be tough on crime, then you're going to have to be
tough enough to pay the piper. -- Michael Owen, for the editorial board
February 13, 2006 AP
A total of 140 medium-security male prisoners were transferred Sunday night from
Alabama to a private correctional facility in Louisiana, the first of 500 to be
moved in the latest attempt to ease overcrowded cellblocks. The prisoners were
transferred from Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent to Pine Prairie
Correctional Center in Pine Prairie, La., in an effort to make room for state
inmates who are in county jails in violation of an Alabama court order. State
prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said Monday the state entered into an emergency
contract with LCS Corrections Services Inc. to send up to 500 inmates to the
central Louisiana facility. The Department of Corrections currently houses 311
female prisoners at an LCS facility in Basile, La. Prisons Commissioner Donal
Campbell announced Friday that he had resigned, effective Feb. 28. He had pushed
for increased state funding for prisons and recently said there was no money in
Gov. Bob Riley's budget proposal to pay for the use of private prisons, an
alternative he supported.
July 16, 2005 AP
A court-appointed monitor warns that erratic treatment of HIV-positive inmates
in an Alabama prison could develop into treatment-resistant AIDS. A new
report by Dr. Joseph Bick issued that warning. It came a year after the state
Department of Corrections agreed to improve medical treatment for the
HIV-positive prisoners. Bick documented four types of
"sub-optimal" HIV treatment at Limestone Correctional Facility, where
more than 200 HIV-positive inmates are housed. A California expert in prison
medicine, Bick was appointed by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Ott to visit
Limestone four times a year and evaluate whether the state and its medical
contractor provided dozens of improvements required in a lawsuit settlement.
Although state officials promised in the settlement last year to hire an HIV
specialist for the men, there has not been one during much of the year, leading
to erratic treatment. Tennessee-based Prison Health Services, the private
company that oversees care in Alabama prisons, says many of the problems Bick
found were related to that position's being vacant. "It's difficult
to recruit a highly qualified HIV specialist, especially to a rural area,"
the company said in a statement Friday. Two specialists PHS previously
hired left the job within weeks or months. Bick warned that the mistakes
in previous care could have irreversibly harmed patients. During his
week-long visit in late May, Bick found: substitute doctors who mixed drugs that
were not supposed to be used together; patients with rising viral loads who had
not been seen for treatment changes or whose failing regimens were changed only
one drug at a time; and doctors who made treatment changes without telling the
patient. Bick's reports have noted some improvements but he has continued
to focus on the inability of keeping doctors and of keeping critical positions
filled. "Due to the fragile nature of this medical program, I
recommend that every effort be made to retain physicians once they are
hired," Bick wrote in the new report. Besides the HIV population,
Limestone houses 1,800 other prisoners and has one physician and one nurse
practitioner to provide their care as well as care for 135 work-release
prisoners in Decatur. Bick called this "by all measures ...
inadequate" and recommended three full-time physicians. PHS has hired
several doctors over the last year, including HIV specialists, who have not
stayed long. The company also said that negative press coverage has frustrated
its efforts to hire a specialist.
June 3, 2005 Decatur Daily
With its magnifying glass focused on inmate health expenses, a legislative
committee came up with as many questions as answers Thursday for the spiraling
medical costs for state prisoners. High hospital costs for ill inmates, concerns
about the company that provides on-site medical services at state prisons and a
prison population that is close to double capacity all complicate the challenge
for the Department of Corrections. The committee questioned, but approved, two
contracts for medically related inmate care. In
a $60,000 part-time contract, Cullman internist Dr. George Lyrene will review
all deaths at state prisons and give court testimony related to the deaths for
$1,100 to $1,250 per day. In a second contract, the state will pay
Rebecca Jones, a registered nurse from Wetumpka, up to $40,000 for
inmate-specific diabetes education and meal monitoring at state prisons.
Committee members also questioned the performance and expenses of Prison Health
Services, the Tennessee company that currently has the contract to provide
medical care for inmates. "The provider has major, major problems, and
there are deep concerns among members of the committee about them,"
Morrison said after the meeting. Morrison said Corrections Commissioner Donal
Campbell and Naglich are working to solve the problems. Morrison said some of
the health costs are the result of actions before the time the Tennessee company
took over inmate care in Alabama. "We are still in lawsuits related to the
previous provider," Morrison said. "With some things, we can only go
as fast as the courts allow."
May 26, 2005 AP
Seeking to save money, the Department of Corrections has signed a contract to
send inmates with chronic illnesses to a South Carolina hospital specializing in
treating prisoners. Alabama prison system officials announced Thursday the
inmates would be sent to Columbia Care Center , rather than to regular community
hospitals in the state. The hospital in Columbia, S.C. , currently has space to
treat up to 50 Alabama inmates who need long-term care, such as chemotherapy,
radiation therapy or kidney dialysis, but the number to be sent initially has
not been determined. There is no set cost for the contract - DOC pays Just Care
as the hospital's services are needed. Department officials said the prisons are
not equipped to treat inmates who need certain specialized treatments for highly
advanced cancers, diabetes and other chronic diseases. Those limitations force
the DOC's health care provider, Prison Health Services, to refer the inmates to
outside hospitals for repeated treatments, said DOC spokesman Brian Corbett. In
fiscal year 2004, the prison system had to pay $9.4 million for treatments that
fell outside PHS's responsibility, officials said. The DOC has refused to pay
$1.2 million to PHS, saying the company has not provided enough doctors and
nurses at the prisons. That issue is under mediation, but is unrelated to the
decision to team up with Just Care, Corbett said.
May 5, 2005 Birmingham News
Alabama's prison medical provider is losing $1.2 million from the state
because it has not provided enough doctors and nurses to state prisons. Prison
Health Services has not fulfilled minimal contract requirements that call for a
certain number of doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff. The company
is not being fined, Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said, but
DOC will not have to pay $1.2 million of its contract. The department hired PHS
in November 2003. The company's three-year, $143 million contract could see more
reductions if the medical staff does not increase. Tennessee-based Prison Health
Services also has come under fire in recent months by physicians who are
monitoring two prisons under federal court settlements. A lawsuit alleging
inadequate medical care is pending at a third prison, the Hamilton Aged and
Infirm facility, where the oldest, sickest men are housed. Dr. Michael Puisis,
court monitor at Tutwiler Prison for Women, said in a March report that prison
medical staff provided poor or incomplete care to three inmates who died last
year. He suggested that negligence might have led to two of those deaths. The
third, a suicide, was likely the result of inadequate care by mental health
workers, who are employed by a different company. Two deaths since then are
still under investigation. Still, attorneys for the
Limestone inmates have asked the federal courts to hold the state in contempt
for failing to abide by the conditions of the settlement. Last year, the state
agreed to dozens of improvements, centering on added medical staff and more
humane housing conditions. Doctors keep leaving, some after claiming PHS did not
allow them the flexibility and resources to practice medicine as they want to
do. "There are just as many complaints raised after the settlement as
before," said Gretchen Rohr, an attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern
Center for Human Rights, who represents Alabama prisons in both cases.
April 25, 2005 Anniston Star
Historically, Alabama has never placed a high priority on the care of its
inmates. Like many states, Alabama is often in a locking-up mood when it comes
to wrongdoers. We don’t mind building prisons and then filling them up. Once
these men and women are behind bars, though, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
Like a lot of states, Alabama also outsources the medical care of inmates in an
effort to cut costs. The problems associated with the hiring out of health care
for prisoners are becoming more obvious by the day. It’s beyond debate — or
at least it should be — that prisoners should not be denied proper medical
treatment. To do otherwise would be cruelly inhumane and a violation of the
human rights of inmates. In 2003 following
reports of deaths and various abuses, Alabama dropped its contract with Naphcare,
a company specializing in treating prisoners. The state replaced the firm with
Prison Health Services, a Nashville-based company. That decision is looking like
a mistake. Last month, The New York Times
reported that New York officials are blaming the deaths of more than 20 inmates
on PHS’ lax policies. Closer to home,
the Birmingham News recently reported on the deaths of two Alabama inmates under
the care of Prison Health Services. Independent
observers as well as the families of Tutwiler Prison for Women inmates Teresa
Morris, who died March 6, and Edna Britt, who died March 23, point to Prison
Health Services shortcomings. Morris, who was a diabetic, was allegedly taken
off her insulin. And advocates are questioning the circumstances surrounding the
death Britt, who had recently been treated for cancer.
At Donaldson, Tutwiler and Limestone prisons, the complaints center on
denial of medicines and a gross shortage of medical personnel. Previous
challenges on behalf of prisoners have put these three facilities under
heightened scrutiny. Dr. Joseph Bick is a
physician assigned to observe conditions at Limestone, where inmates with HIV
are housed. He has written, “Interviews with patients, chart reviews and
feedback from physicians support the concern that patients are not consistently
given the medications that have been ordered for them for serious
life-threatening conditions.”
The Department of Corrections can outsource all it wants, but in the end,
state inmates are the responsibility of the state. It’s time to start asking
hard questions.
April 17, 2005 Birmingham News
By the time Teresa Morris died, her legs were so badly swollen that the prison
shackles dug into them. A 53-year-old diabetic serving time for domestic
violence at Tutwiler Prison for Women, Morris spent the hours before her March 6
death shackled in a hospital bed in Montgomery. Prison officials say she died of
natural causes. Morris's family believes the prison medical staff, employees of
private contractor Prison Health Services, provided inadequate care for her
diabetes. They say she was taken off her insulin shots, for reasons the family
does not understand. Her death is the latest in a series of red flags suggesting
that Prison Health Services is not providing sufficient quality medical care to
many Alabama prisoners, according to interviews with prisoners' attorneys,
former PHS employees and reports from independent physicians who monitor care at
some of Alabama's prisons. "I can't say whether or not she was given
insulin," said Ben Purser, the company's vice president for ethics and
chief compliance officer. "It was an expected death; that is about the best
thing I can say to you." Morris's
death certificate says she died from diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and
Hepatitis C. But she was not being treated for the last two, Freeman said. Last
November, Dr. Michael Puisis, court monitor for the Tutwiler medical settlement,
visited the prison and reviewed treatment records for several prisoners. Of
Morris's care, he wrote: "She was seen every three months, but not by a
doctor. ... Liver function tests were abnormal but not investigated. An
incomplete physical examination was done." Even after the legal settlements
mandating better care at Tutwiler and Limestone, there have been severe
shortages of doctors and nurses at the prisons. Nearly a year later, critical
reports by court monitors continue to come out of both places. "These
records reflect thousands of doses of medications ordered by physicians that
have either not been given, or have been given without being documented,"
Dr. Joseph Bick, monitor in the Limestone case, wrote after visiting the HIV
Unit in February. "Interviews with patients, chart reviews and feedback
from physicians support the concern that patients are not consistently given the
medications that have been ordered for them for serious life-threatening
conditions." What was even more disturbing, the doctor wrote, was that
Prison Health Services provided documents showing that nurses had recently been
trained on this issue. It
was Bick's third visit to the prison. Each was followed by a report showing the
state was out of compliance with several key medical provisions of the 2004
settlement. A constant failing at Limestone is doctor and nurse
shortages. The prison, with 2,200 people, has become a revolving door for
physicians. One physician left in late 2004. Another, Dr. Valda Chijide, an
infectious disease specialist, was placed on administrative leave after writing
her superiors about constrictions placed on her that made it impossible to do
her job. She resigned in February. Prison Health Services then brought in a
doctor from a temporary agency, but by early April she, too, decided not to
return, PHS' Purser said. During
vacancies, Dr. Will Mosier, Prison Health Services' Montgomery-based medical
director, fills in at Limestone and other prisons when needed. There are
provisions in the company's contract for the state to deduct payment to the
company if its staff numbers are down, and the Corrections Department monitors
staffing levels on a regular basis, Corbett said. How much money the state is
owed for empty positions is under debate, he said.
February 9, 2004
A $500,000 tab for unused slots in a private out-of-state prison is a bitter
pill for taxpayers of Alabama to swallow. Particularly with prisons here crammed
with nearly twice as many inmates as they were built to house and with state
government in a severe financial bind. Prison officials must not only
review how the state came to agree to pay for beds that are going unused as
state inmates are returned from the Mississippi prison, but to make sure any
future prison contracts don't come with hidden surprises. (Al.com)
February 5, 2004
The Alabama Department of Corrections will pay a private prison company at least
$500,000 for empty prison space in Mississippi. That's
because the state's contract with the Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of
America requires Alabama to pay rent for 1,345 beds through March 11. The state
has opted to bring most of the prisoners home early, but still must pay the
$27.50 per diem cost. Alabama prison officials say the unused beds are a
necessity, and the result of the state's chronic underfunding and overcrowding
of prisons. Now that bed space has been freed up at state prisons, the
department is sending inmates home a few at a time, but the contract requires
the state to continue paying for 95 percent of the full occupancy rate.
Corrections employees began returning inmates Jan. 19. By the end of this week,
they expect to return 379. Unused beds for that group alone will cost $340,000
for 35 days. More men will be returning every week until March 12, leaving empty
beds that will push the total to at least $500,000. "There's no way
you could keep them over there until the last day of the contract and bring them
back all at once," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for the Alabama Department
of Corrections. "It's physically impossible to move 1,416 inmates in one
day." State officials signed the emergency contract with CCA last
June. Alabama's prison population had hit an all-time high of 28,440, and the
Department of Corrections was facing pressure from lawsuits related to prison
conditions and the backlog of state inmates in county jails. "We did
what we had to do out of an emergency situation. And yes, unfortunately, it cost
money," Corbett said. "It would be wiser in the long run and
cheaper in the long run if you would properly fund corrections up front, as
opposed to trying to correct your emergency situations on the back end,"
Corbett said. State got bargain: A spokesman for CCA said
Alabama got a bargain in its per diem rate. Elsewhere, private prison companies
have charged states more than $50 per inmate per day. CCA's Tallahatchie
County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss., sat empty last summer. The
company quickly staffed it for the Alabama contract, and federal law requires
CCA to give those employees a 60-day notice before termination, said CCA
spokesman Steve Owen. "There had to be some guarantees for us to
hire, ramp up and staff that institution for the duration of that
contract," Owen said. Increased parole and community corrections
programs have freed up space in Alabama prisons. The prison population was down
to 27,344 in December 2003. The Department of Corrections is also shifting
work release and minimum security inmates, primarily from Montgomery and from
the Elmore Correctional Facility, to make room for the men returning from
Mississippi. Many minimum security inmates will transfer to vacant work release
beds. 980 backlogged: Prior to sending the prisoners to
Mississippi, 980 state inmates were backlogged in county jails for more than 30
days - the crux of a lawsuit against the Department of Corrections. A year
later, in part because of the Mississippi contract, no state prisoners have been
housed in counties more than 30 days, Corbett said. The contract possibly
saved money by halting additional costly litigation or federal intervention, he
said. "We averted a crisis situation last summer, but by no means are
we out of the woods," Corbett said. State prisons continue to
operate at 185 percent of capacity. (AL.com)
January 10, 2004
The state prison system plans to continue with its new health service contracts
for inmates even though a legislative committee wouldn't approve the deals.
On Thursday, members of the Legislature's Contract Revenue Committee said the
deals were too expensive and were reached without open bidding. Prison
system spokesman Brian Corbett said the contracts have already been implemented
and will continue in effect. "Nothing is going to change," he
said. "We still have 100 percent coverage." Committee members
objected to a $143 million contract with Prison Health Services of Brentwood,
Tenn., to provide medical care for Alabama's inmates for three years; a $29
million contract for MHM Correctional Services Inc. of Vienna, Va., to provide
mental health care for three years; and a $90,000 contract with Correctional
Medical Management of Nashville, Tenn., to monitor the work for three months.
Normally, state agencies submit contracts to the Legislature's Contract Review
Committee before they take effect. If the committee objects to them, the
committee can delay them for 45 days, but the state agency can implement them
after that time pass. (AP)
January 9, 2004
A legislative committee blocked three contracts with companies for medical care
in Alabama prisons, saying the deals were too expensive and were reached without
open bidding. The move could leave more than 27,000 inmates temporarily
without health care. Prison system officials have defended the contracts,
valued at a combined $172.3 million. Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell
warned that delaying them could land the state in trouble with federal courts,
which are already reviewing prison conditions. (AP)
January 6, 2004
The 1,424 male Alabama inmates being housed in a private prison in Mississippi
should be returned to Alabama within 90 days, state Corrections Commissioner
Donal Campbell said Tuesday. Alabama transferred the inmates last summer
to a prison run by Corrections Corporation of America, the Tallahatchie County
Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss., to ease the overcrowding in Alabama's
prisons and county jails. (AP)
October 14, 2003
With his $1.2 billion tax plan rejected, Gov. Bob Riley plans to release
5000-6000 non-violent, Alabama inmates this fiscal year due to budget cuts.
After 54 of 67 Alabama counties rejected the governor’s tax plan on September
9, the state government was left on its own to find a way to alleviate the
state’s over-crowded prisons without the additional funds and a state budget
deficit of $675 million. In his state of the state address on March
4, 2003, Gov. Riley predicted a state deficit of at least $500 million in 2004.
His solution was to cut the General Fund Budget by 20 percent. He also predicted
a need of $125 million more in 2004 for the Alabama State Corrections budget. An
estimated 27,000 inmates inhabit prisons that were designed to hold only 12,000.
The release of non-violent inmates has not been the first step to alleviate the
problem of over-crowded prisons in Alabama. In July of this year the Corrections
Corporation of America, for the first time in its history, agreed to aid the
Alabama Department of Corrections by relocating 1,400 male, medium-security
prisoners to the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss.
However, the relocation was always intended as a temporary solution to the
problem. Now, Gov. Riley has introduced the Pardons and Paroles Bill.
This bill expands the Pardons and Parole Board from three members to seven
members and will divide it into two separate boards. This will hopefully give
the parole boards a chance to hear more cases and release 200 inmates per week
as opposed to the 75 to 80 which are released a week now. The intention is that
the release of non-violent inmates will leave room for more dangerous criminals
that would be more of a danger to society. The inmates released will be
those convicted of possession and distribution of drugs, felony DUI and theft of
property. Alabama is not the first state to enact of releasing non-violent
inmates. In December of 2002, Gov. Paul Patton of Kentucky’s plan to avoid his
state’s own $6 million budget deficit released hundreds of Kentucky inmates.
They were non-violent prisoners as well. University of Alabama criminal justice
professor Dr. Robert Sigler who is an expert on prison systems agrees with the
idea to release non-violent inmates. “Right now we’re at a point where
we’re putting a lot of people in prison who we really don’t need to; its not
a good use of our money. It doesn’t increase our safety,” he said. Dr.
Sigler also gave his opinion on the experience of released inmates in general,
not just the proposed to be released inmates. “Almost all people, if they
get a little bit of help at home, will make that adjustment back. Prison is a
pretty bad place,” Dr. Sigler said. (Dateline Alabama)
September 13, 2003
State prison officials, already contemplating the early release of 20 per cent
of the inmate population to shave costs, now face a new problem: The price for
providing adequate health care to the remaining prisoners may rise by tens of
millions of dollars next year. The increased costs became apparent as the
state received bids on a new health care contract, a contract that prison
officials say is better designed to comply with court orders and recent
lawsuits. The state, along with the current health care provider --
Birmingham-based NaphCare Inc. -- has been named in lawsuits for allegedly
neglecting to provide adequate care for Alabama inmates during the last three
years. An Atlanta-based human rights group recently sued the state,
alleging that the deaths of 38 HIV-infected inmates during a four-year period at
Limestone Correctional Facility could have been prevented with proper care.
Gov. Bob Riley has proposed adding about $16 million to the Department of
Corrections' $234 million annual budget. "When you underfund
something for decades, and this agency sees a population explosion of more than
1,000 inmates per year, you can't put a $16 million Band-Aid on it and think
it's going to solve all of our problems," said Brian Corbett, spokesman for
the Department of Corrections. Prison officials say some of that money
could help pay for the new health care contract. But much of the increase is
expected to be eaten by the additional costs of housing prisoners out-of-state,
a move made this year to comply with a court order to relieve severe
overcrowding in state prisons. State prison officials say they have no
choice but to revise the requirements in the health care contract. Corbett
said Friday that even if the Department can pay nearly double what it did during
the last three-year term, that amount won't be nearly enough to provide all the
health care services the department would like. Bids for the next
three-year contract were submitted last week, the lowest nearly double that of
the previous three-year term. The contract is scheduled to be awarded Oct. 6,
Corbett said, after the Legislature approves the new state budget. Seven
different companies, including NaphCare, offered bids ranging from $150 million
to more than $200 million for medical anor mental health services for the
three-year period. The previous three-year contract with NaphCare cost the
state nearly $90 million. NaphCare's current bid is among the lowest, at nearly
$155 million -- though NaphCare leaders said they could negotiate a less
demanding contract for less money. While NaphCare and the state do not
openly criticize or blame the other for any negligence, each has a different
perspective on how a new contract and an increase in funds would affect inmate
care. Corbett said the revised contract would give the state more control
over care -- something lacking during the previous three years. "The
problem is not so much with NaphCare but with the contract itself," Corbett
said. "The contract was not in the best interest of the state, because it
was not specific enough. Staffing levels, administrative policy, standards of
care, pool overages ... were not specific enough to give the department as much
control as we desired." In the old contract, Corbett said, NaphCare
"determined all administrative policies regarding delivery of the health
care. Therefore, they did not have to respond to requests as far as developing
treatment protocols and procedures." NaphCare spokesman David Davis
said that an increase in spending on inmate care was not the answer to improving
inmate health. "It's not that more money means better health,"
Davis said. "It has to do with facilities, operations, health care,
everything coming together. "Any health care provider is limited by
the facilities, the environment and the stipulations of the contract,"
Davis said. He would not elaborate on what specifically could be improved at
Alabama prisons. NaphCare maintains that it did not fail to do its duty as
laid out in the contract during its three-year term. (Al.com)
August 14, 2003
The quality and quantity of medical care for prison inmates is among
state services hanging in the balance in the Sept. 9 referendum on Gov. Bob
Riley's tax proposals. Prison Commissioner Donal Campbell has notified
more than 300 medical services vendors that they have until Sept. 10 - the day
after the vote - to file written proposals for providing medical services for
inmates during the next three years. If the tax plan fails, "We're
all going to have to go back and revisit our budgets and see where we cut and
where we don't cut," said Deputy Commissioner Terrence Jones. Jones,
whose duties include overseeing inmate medical care, said the detailed 73-page
request for proposals being sent to medical service vendors across the nation
proposes more services and controls in some areas than the present contract with
Birmingham-based NaphCare Inc. Unlike the present contract, the proposed new
contract would allow the state to withhold money due to be paid to the company
if required services are not provided, or to deduct the costs of bringing
services up to standards, Jones said. The proposed contract also would
require more dental services for inmates and more inmate health education and
training, and it would provide for termination of the contract for failure to
secure or maintain personnel described in the contract, Jones said.
Campbell notified NaphCare on May 2 that its $29.5 million-per-year contract
with the state would be canceled in 90 days, or about the first of August, but
he has extended the contract on a month-by-month basis until a new contract is
signed. Campbell told members of the state Legislature's prison oversight
committee several weeks ago that he can't sign a new medical services contract
until he gets a budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, and that won't
happen until after the referendum. Jones wouldn't say Tuesday how many of
the more than 300 vendors invited to submit proposals have done so or have
expressed interest in doing so. NaphCare, whose services have been
criticized by Chicago consultants Jacqueline Moore and Associates and which has
been named as a defendant in inmate lawsuits, is among those vying for the new
contract. "Our hope is to continue to provide Alabama inmates health
care as we do across the country," said NaphCar spokesman David Davis.
"NaphCare is committed in providing quality and affordable health care to
the Alabama inmate population in accordance with the stipulations in the
contract with the Alabama Department of Corrections." NaphCare filed
suit against Moore and Associates last month, contending that their audit
reports contained "numerous inaccurate and unsubstantiated statements and
conclusions" that have damaged the company's reputation. (Al.com)
July 16, 2003
Alabama prison Commissioner Donal Campbell is quick to say that sending
inmates to private, out-of-state prisons to ease overcrowding is only a
temporary fix. Until, he says, more space is available in Alabama's prison
system. Campbell is correct in taking that stance. Indeed, paying to house
up to 300 female and 1,400 male inmates in private lock-ups makes sense only in
the short term. Long term, it's a loser, even at the bargain-basement rate of
$27.50 per day per inmate (about $10,000 a year). That's because the state
can't afford to watch its prison population grow at the current rate. The
inmates kept in Mississippi and Louisiana are farther from their families (some
of them mothers separated from their children) making visitations more of
a hardship. Plus, for the $27.50 per day, the inmates don't have access to the
programs they need to help them reintegrate into society, such as drug
treatment, job training and education. And don't think for a moment that
the price the state pays now when the private prisons are new with ample space
will be the same years from now when space even in private lockups might be
scarce. Private prisons are no bargain for Alabama.
June 23, 2003
Alabama might have to pay more to house 309
women inmates at a Louisiana private prison because of higher-than-expected
medical costs, owners of the prison said. "The medical issue is more
than we anticipated," Patrick LeBlanc, owner of LCS Corrections Services,
told The Birmingham News for a Saturday story. Alabama pays LCS $22.85 per
inmate per day to house women transferred from the crowded Tutwiler Prison in
Wetumpka to the private prison in Basile, La. That rate was approved
earlier this month by the Legislature's Contract Review Committee and is less
than the initial $24 daily rate agreed upon in April when Alabama began sending
women to the LCS lockup. Since then, LCS officials have realized Alabama's
inmates require more medical attention than Louisiana prisoners housed at Basile,
LeBlanc said. About 20 to 25 of every 150 Louisiana inmates require
prescription medication, he said. The Alabama prisoners' prescription needs are
more than double that. Alabama prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said the
state and LCS have not yet agreed upon a rate adjustment or any other
compromise. He said the Corrections Department chose which prisoners were sent
out of state based on low security risk, not medical problems. Corrections
Commissioner Donal Campbell this week asked LCS for proposals on the cost of
enhanced medical care. "He did ask them to put together something
from a cost-analysis standpoint to determine, if things weren't being met or
handled correctly, what would it take to make sure they were," Corbett
said. Inmate Linda Faye Knight was sent to Basile on June 12. She's still
waiting for blood-pressure medicine she's taken for the last 15 years, said her
sister, Victoria White of Birmingham. "She saw a nurse, but the nurse
told her the medicine was not there," White said. Her 46-year-old sister is
up for parole July 8 on a manslaughter conviction. (AP)
June 11, 2003
The Legislature's Contract Review Committee gave formal approval Thursday to a
plan to send women prisoners to a private prison in Louisiana. The Alabama
Department of Corrections transferred 140 women prisoners in April to the South
Louisiana Correctional Center in Basile, La., to relieve overcrowding at
Tutwiler Prison for women in Wetumpka. The state is under a federal court order
to reduce the population at the women's prison. Prison Commissioner Donal
Campbell has promised U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson that the number of
inmates at Tutwiler would be reduced from 1,000 to 750 by June 30.
Campbell originally made the transfers under an emergency contract, which did
not have to be approved by the Legislative committee. The committee approved a
one-year contract Thursday without comment, allowing the prison system to house
up to 300 inmates at the Louisiana prison for up to a year. The contract
with LCS Correctional Services Inc. calls for the state to pay $24 a day per
inmate to house the prisoners in Louisiana. (AP)
April 2, 2003
A Senate appropriation bill that will pay for efforts to reduce crowding in
Alabama prisons won final passage in the House on Tuesday. The bill will
give the Department of Corrections $2.7 million in emergency funding to reduce
overcrowding at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women to comply with a federal court
order to reduce the prison population. That money would be used to move female
inmates to out-of-state prisons, probably in Louisiana. Rep. John Knight,
D-Montgomery, sponsored similar legislation in the House. He wants women to be
moved out of Alabama only as a last resort. Lucia Penland, director of the
Alabama Prison Project, a prison advocacy organization, said prisoners who
maintain close relationships with their families return to prison less often
than those who do not. "If they are two states away, that will not be
possible," she said. (Montgomery Advertiser)
March 15, 2003
The Birmingham company that holds the $30-million-a-year contract for
providing medical treatment in Alabama prisons faces tough questions about cost
overruns and the quality of its care. The pressure on NaphCare Inc. comes
from Donal Campbell, Gov. Bob Riley's appointee as commissioner of the
Department of Corrections. Campbell has had to ask the Legislature for
$6.9 million to cover extra prison health care costs, even as his legal staff
scrambles to defend lawsuits alleging that medical treatment of Alabama inmates
is so bad as to amount to cruel and unusual punishment, forbidden by the U.S.
Constitution. Campbell recently met with NaphCare officials, wanting
explanations for both the overruns and an outside monitor's reports that tend to
substantiate inmates' complaints about lax care. In 2000, prison health
care in Alabama was provided by Correctional Medical Services of St. Louis, for
roughly $26 million a year. But CMS had been working on a series of contract
extensions, and because of rising costs and a growing inmate population wanted a
new contract for more money. The Department of Corrections invited CMS and
other companies to bid on the work, and offers ranged from $38 million to $46
million. At that point, finance officials in the administration of Gov.
Don Siegelman bypassed the DOC legal staff and hired the Mobile law firm Miller,
Hamilton, Snider & Odom. But critics immediately questioned whether
any company could make a profit and provide adequate medical care to 27,000
inmates for such a sum. Indeed, while the $30 million contract may seem large,
it solidified Alabama's position as the state that spends the least per inmate
on health care. Florida -- whose prisons, unlike Alabama's, are accredited by a
national correctional health care board -- spends three times as much per
inmate. "The average state spends about $2,500 to $3,000 per inmate,
and Alabama's spending a little over $1,000," said Ron Shanksy of Chicago,
co-founder of the Society of Correctional Physicians. "You're off the
charts." Even before the state contract was signed in early 2001,
Jefferson County officials were complaining publicly about NaphCare's
performance in county jails in Birmingham and Bessemer. Last year, Jefferson,
Morgan and Madison counties all parted ways with NaphCare, finding new jail
health care providers amid complaints by inmates, family members and jail
officials. Last year also saw a rush of litigation against NaphCare and
the state Department of Corrections, alleging inadequate medical care for
Alabama prisoners. The Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta based
nonprofit legal group, sued on behalf of inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women.
A wrongful death suit was recently filed against NaphCare and DOC in Montgomery
County Circuit Court. The charge there is negligence in the sudden death of a
29-year-old Tutwiler inmate, Pamela Brown, in 2001. In all these suits,
NaphCare and DOC are co-defendants. One of the lawyers representing NaphCare is
Giles Perkins. That has raised eyebrows in the legal community because Perkins,
a former state Democratic Party official, is employed by the firm Miller,
Hamilton, Snider & Odom and helped run the state prison health care contract
negotiations won by NaphCare. But reports by Jacqueline Moore &
Associates, a Chicago consulting firm hired by the DOC to monitor NaphCare's
performance, tend to back up some complaints voiced by Alabama inmates.
Perhaps most alarming was her assertion that the death rate among HIV inmates at
Limestone was twice that of the national rate for such inmates. At several
institutions, she found high turnover and staff vacancies among medical
personnel. In her August 2000 review of Staton Correctional Facility,
which provides medical care for nearly 4,000 inmates at four central Alabama
prisons, she found that the sole physician had recently quit and six nursing
slots were unfilled. In an interview, Harrison described Moore's reports
as "inaccurate," and went on to suggest she tried to steer Jefferson
County's jail medical care contract from NaphCare to Prison Health Services, a
Brentwood, Tenn.-based company she co-founded and for which her ex-husband still
works. She dismissed Harrison's charge that she was trying to help PHS.
"I left that company in 1990," Moore said. "My ex-husband and I
don't speak." A former NaphCare dentist, Elcid Burkett, said medicine
was hard to come by for health care professionals working in Alabama prisons.
"I was buying my own peroxide," he said. NaphCare is no worse or
better than its predecessor CMS, according to Sam Eichold, a Mobile physician
who serves on a prison medical oversight committee. He thinks the companies have
done about as well as anyone can expect, given what Alabama pays per inmate.
"They cut corners," said Eichold, whose committee has expressed its
own concerns to DOC. "That's how they make their profit."
(Mobile Register)
February 7, 2003
MONTGOMERY Medical consultants hired to review health-care services in
Alabama
prisons have reported what a lawyer for inmates calls "serious
deficiencies." The audit
reports released Thursday were ordered last year by the Siegelman administration
to monitor health care services provided to prison inmates by NaphCare, a
Birmingham-based health management contractor.
Former Prison Commissioner Mike Haley and former Gov. Don Siegelman
refused repeated requests last year to release the reports, conducted at eight
Alabama
prisons between May and August. "This
is totally consistent with what the prisoners have been telling us, that they
have to wait for weeks for dental services, for things such as abscesses which
are so painful that some of the women are pulling their own teeth," said
Tamara Serwer of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is representing
inmates in a pending federal lawsuit. "These are serious deficiencies in
health care services for
Alabama
prison inmates." (Al.com)
January 27, 2003
Gov. Bob Riley on Wednesday selected the former head of the Tennessee prison
system to lead Alabama's troubled Department of Corrections. Donal
Campbell, 51, takes over a prison system under court orders to reduce
overcrowding in its women's prison and to find more space for its male inmates.
Campbell said Alabama's problems are nothing new to him because Tennessee's
prisons dealt with the same issues in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Tennessee uses private prisons to house about 4,500 of its 18,000 inmates -
something Campbell and Riley said they plan to consider in Alabama, which has
never used private prisons. Campbell said he's not in favor of privatizing
existing prisons but would consider privately run prisons to provide new space
for inmates. (Huntsville Times)
Alabama Legislature
September 9, 2007 Huntsville Times
The Alabama Medicaid Agency will get a $3.8 million contract with a company
with a checkered past, but a political cloud may linger over the transaction.
And the state Department of Corrections will get a $233.73 million contract with
a St. Louis company that bid $6 million more than the losing bidder for inmate
health care services. Democrats insinuate that politics may have played a role
in ACS Heritage Inc.'s winning the Medicaid contract even though its bid was
$500,000 higher than the next company. And the firm that won the prison
contract, Correctional Medical Services, Inc., was represented by former
Republican Lt. Gov. Steve Windom, a lobbyist with close ties to Gov. Bob Riley.
September 7, 2007 Birmingham News
The Legislative Contract Review Committee on Thursday delayed implementation
of a $223 million prison health-care contract after an official with a company
that bid $9 million less questioned the process. The panel also delayed a $3.7
million Medicaid contract to computerize medical records after lawmakers
questioned the company's performance in other states. The Contract Review
Committee reviews state agency contracts. Committee members can delay the
contracts for 45 days but do not have the power to cancel them. The Department
of Corrections, after taking proposals, selected Correctional Medical Services
Inc. of St. Louis to provide medical care to Alabama's more than 20,000 inmates.
Another company, Wexford Health Sources, had submitted the low bid that was
about $9 million cheaper than Correctional Medical Services'. Rep. Alvin Holmes,
D-Montgomery, and other legislators asked Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen
why the department had not selected the low bidder. Allen said Correctional
Medical Services scored slightly higher on bid reviews, which take quality of
care into account. "I don't know that Mr. Holmes would go to the cheapest doctor
in town," Allen said after the meeting. Lawmakers also questioned that the
prison staff who reviewed the bids included several former employees of CMS.
Allen said none had worked for the company in at least six years. "I have full
confidence in these people. There was no politics involved in this selection,"
Allen said. But Michael Davis, a lawyer representing Wexford, said company
officials wanted to meet with the commissioner before the contract was
finalized. Davis said company officials had questions about how bidders' scores
were determined.
September 5, 2007 Huntsville
Times
The state corrections commissioner was questioned by
legislators Wednesday over a $233.73 million contract for health care for
Alabama's nearly 26,000 inmates. Commissioner Richard Allen is seeking approval
of a three-year contract with St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc.
CMS would take over a contract now held by Prison Health Services Inc., of
Brentwood, Tenn. Sen. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, a retired physician,
endorsed the CMS contract, which would have two potential one-year renewals. "I
have a keen interest in (prisons), particularly the health care," Griffith told
the committee. "We're rapidly moving into the baby boomers going through the
prison system just like we're going through it outside the prison system."
Griffith said health care for convicts is a "major, major cost factor" for the
state, but he added that "we're capping it with this contract and I think it's
well thought out." The committee has the power to delay the contract for 45 days
but cannot stop it from being enacted. Some members of the Joint Legislative
Contract Review Committee questioned Allen about members of his staff who
formerly worked for the two private companies and were involved in the selection
process for CMS. A third company that submitted a proposal, Pittsburgh-based
Wexford Health Sources, was represented by an attorney who said he will ask for
an explanation of the grading process when the committee meets again today.
Allen acknowledged that Wexford's bid was about $6 million lower than CMS. "We
evaluated the contracts very carefully," said Allen. "All the bidders were told
that price would be 40 percent of the score and other things - innovations, cost
savings, those types of things - would be scored 60 percent." Allen said Wexford
scored third. Rep. Blaine Galliher, R-Gadsden, said he was concerned that
Department of Corrections employees who formerly worked for CMS and PHS were on
the team that graded proposals submitted by the three companies. But Allen
defended the process, calling prison health care "a very narrow specialty." "If
you look at the resumes of these (DOC) people, they have worked for several
companies, not just this company (CMS)," he said. "Nobody in our department has
worked for this company in the last six or seven years. They've also worked for
PHS. They've also worked for about a dozen other companies. They go back and
forth between the companies and state service."
July 12, 2007 All American Patriots
The Alabama Department of Corrections will put 5,763 acres of unproductive
and money-losing properties up for sale, bring state inmates back from Louisiana
prisons and put more inmates to work. Governor Bob Riley and Corrections
Commission Richard Allen said Wednesday that proceeds generated from the land
sales during the coming year will go toward prison infrastructure improvements
and not operating expenses. All property to be sold will be appraised,
advertised and sold through a public process to the highest bidder. Such a
process was used earlier this year when 540 acres of the Farquhar State Cattle
Ranch near Greensboro was sold for more than $1.6 million, which is higher than
its appraised value of $1.4 million. The properties being put up for sale are:
1,851 acres of the 2,215 acres at Red Eagle Honor Farm in Montgomery The
remaining 3,869 acres of the Farquhar State Cattle Ranch An empty and unused
16,000-square foot building on South Union Street in Montgomery 32 acres in
Wetumpka on Highway 231 North 10 acres at the old Kilby prison in Montgomery All
the properties are either unneeded or losing money. The Farquhar State Cattle
Ranch, for example, has lost approximately $377,000 during the past two fiscal
years and has lost almost $60,000 in the first six months of the current fiscal
year. "These properties are a financial drain on the taxpayers and aren't
needed," said Governor Riley. "It makes no sense to hold on to them. We will
sell them, relieve this burden on the taxpayers and use the money for some
long-needed improvements to correctional facilities." The Department of
Corrections expects the sale of the properties will bring in up to $22 million.
This is not the first time land owned by the Department of Corrections has been
sold. In addition to the sale earlier this year of 540 acres at the cattle
ranch, more than 630 acres of Corrections property was sold through the bid
process in 2003 and 2004 for $3.8 million. Governor Riley said the sale of idle
land would not be limited to the Department of Corrections, noting that several
agencies, including the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, own
properties that may be sold. The Governor's office is working with state
agencies to determine what property they own is unneeded and could be sold. In
addition to selling unneeded property, the Department of Corrections will
terminate its contracts with two Louisiana-based companies and return
approximately 1,300 male and female inmates from private prisons in Louisiana.
All inmates in Louisiana will be back in Alabama by the end of November. That
move is expected to save the Corrections Department almost $10 million.
April 16, 2007 The Press-Register
Some members of a legislative oversight committee contend that Gov. Bob Riley's
administration broke the law on three no-bid contracts by failing to submit them
to the panel months ago. "If you have got a law, all departments in the Riley
administration have to follow the law," said state Rep. Alvin Holmes,
D-Montgomery, a committee member. "The same law applied to Don Siegelman that
applies to the Riley administration." During Riley's 2002 campaign for a first
term, the Republican blasted then-Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat, for his
administration's handling of no-bid contracts. Ken Wallis, legal advisor to
Riley, said recently that the administration is "absolutely" following state law
regarding all contracts, including the three questioned by some lawmakers. One
of the three was an emergency contract -- for prison health services -- that was
used for four months before the administration submitted the permanent deal to
the committee. Panel members said they learned about the other two contracts
through reporters. The prison contract totaled more than $56 million, while each
of the others was for $60,000 or less.
December 8, 2006 Ledger-Enquirer
Gov. Bob Riley's chief of staff, Toby Roth, is leaving to become a lobbyist and
will be replaced by Riley's senior adviser, Dave Stewart. Roth directed Riley's
campaign for governor in 2002 and then became his chief of staff. His last day
will be Dec. 15, Riley said Friday. Roth will open a Montgomery office for
Capitol Resources, a Jackson, Miss.-based lobbying company whose principals
include two nephews of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The firm lists many
clients, including Beau Rivage Resorts, eBay, Corrections Corporation of
America, Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Rolls-Royce North America, and the
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
January 23, 2006 AP
Proponents of legislation to extend state contracts up to five years say it
could save the state money, but critics, including Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, say it
would allow an outgoing governor to lock in the next administration. The bill's
sponsor, Rep. Marcel Black, D-Tuscumbia, said Monday he hopes to get the House
to pass it Tuesday. The bill would still have to be passed by the Senate and
signed by the governor to become law. Black and Means proposed the legislation
at the request of the Fine Geddie lobbying firm, which represents many
corporations at the Legislature. Ben Patterson, a member of the firm, said it
has several clients interested in doing business with the state, including
Northrop Grumman. The firm's long list of clients also includes BellSouth,
Corrections Corp. of America, General Electric and Motorola, according to the
company's reports to the State Ethics Commission. They were major fundraisers
for Riley in the 2002 race for governor, with their political action committees
contributing more than $660,000.
March 12, 2003
With Alabama facing court orders to reduce prison overcrowding and a $500
million funding crunch, Gov. Bob Riley is turning to the private sector for
relief. As part of the plan to decrease the population at Tutwiler Prison
for women, the Department of Corrections has proposed transferring prisoners
out-of-state. Privatization -- or contracting state government services to
private businesses is not new -- as state and local officials nationwide
struggle to find ways to make government more efficient and cost effective in
tough financial times. The governor and prison commissioner Donal Campbell
proposed in February to move approximately 300 state inmates to private
out-of-state facilities as part of a plan to ease overcrowding at Tulwiler.
E.J. "Mac" McArthur, executive director of the Alabama State Employees
Association, doesn't want private industry involved in government functions.
Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, chairman of the House Government Finance and
Appropriations Committee, said he doesn't sense tremendous interest among
legislators in moving in the direction of privatization of prisons.
"I think the coin flips both ways. Some can point to cost-savings,
but there are horror stories in other states on prison privatization,"
Knight said. "Alabama prisoners should be Alabama's responsibility,
and we should live up to that responsibility. McArthur says state
employees worked hard to pass a 1999 law that provides for direct and effective
control over corrections institutions in the state in an attempt to head off
privatization. The law also forbids control of corrections institutions by
a "nongovernmental entity" without approval of both the Alabama House
and Senate. McArthur thinks that law would bar private prison construction
or operation in Alabama. It might, but that law did not stop the transfer
to out-of-state facilities after Campbell got an attorney general's opinion that
said it did not apply to such a move. James Barber, deputy director of the
Mississippi Legislative Peer Committee, said privatization may have peaked and
plateaued, based on what colleagues in other states have said. (Montgomery
Advertiser)
March 11, 2003
Legislation to ease the overcrowding crisis at Alabama's
prison for women appears to be on the fast track as lawmakers return today, the
first day of the 2003 regular session in which either house of the Legislature
can pass bills. Finance Director Drayton Nabers last week told the
Senate's General Fund budget writing committee that the $3.6 million would
partly be used to transfer the women prisoners to the private facility.
(Montgomery Advertiser)
Baldwin County Jail
Baldwin County, Alabama
Correctional Medical Services
April 26, 2005 Mobile Register
Scott Allen Winingear spent less than two months in the Baldwin County jail last
year before administrators concluded they were not equipped to control the
diabetic inmate's blood sugar, according to federal court testimony. So
concerned was the nursing staff about Winingear's condition, that officials had
him transferred to Mobile County Metro Jail, which has 24-hour medical services
on staff, Baldwin jail personnel testified. But in about three months at Metro
Jail, the 31-year-old Indiana man's blood sugar readings actually got worse,
according to the federal court testimony earlier this year. The case marks
another criticism of the Metro Jail system that has come under attack in recent
years and echoes findings of a nutritional consultant who reported last week
that the jail does not appear to be preparing different meals for diabetics and
other inmates with special needs. According to testimony at the sentencing
hearing, Winingear's problems at Mobile County Metro Jail stemmed from a switch
to a cheaper form of insulin and a diet that was not conducive to controlling
his diabetes. Testimony at the hearing indicated that the jails in Baldwin and
Mobile treated Winingear differently. At Metro Jail, Winingear testified, he
received the same meals everyone else did. He said the diet consisted of
high-carbohydrate foods like spaghetti and white bread, along with sugar-laden
items like fruit cocktail and Kool-Aid. Unsweetened alternatives were not
available, he said. Winingear testified that his parents put money in his jail
account but that administrators deducted those funds to pay for his medical
care. As a result, he testified, he was unable to supplement his meals by
purchasing snacks from the jail store. Winingear contended in his testimony that
the jail gave him Novolin 70/30, a cheaper mix of Humulin-R and Humulin-L that
he said was not as effective. A former nurse at Metro Jail, who asked not to be
identified out of fear she might face professional reprisals, said the jail
switched insulins in the fall. She also said nurses often did not test diabetic
inmates' blood sugar levels frequently enough. "The nurses were pushed so
hard that there hardly was a time in the day when we were not so far
behind," she said. The nurse said administrators also showed little
flexibility in making sure diabetics were regularly monitored. "If they
were at a religious service or something else when blood sugars were tested, the
unwritten policy was they would do without," she said. Correctional Medical
Services, a St. Louis company that has provided health services to Metro Jail
inmates since July could not immediately offer a response. In testimony at
Winingear's sentencing hearing, an administrator with the firm acknowledged that
a nurse at one time was late making rounds to check blood sugar levels and
administer insulin. Carla Wasden, the jail's health services administrator,
testified that it was possible the nurse was late more than once.
Correctional
Medical Services
December 17, 2004 Corrections Professional
Private prison employees' terror claim survived dismissal. Case name: Bullin et
al.,v. Correctional Medical Services Inc., No. 2030573 (Ala. Civ. App.
11/19/04). Ruling: Because private prison employees claimed they suffered mental
anguish as a result of their employer's failure to properly implement policies
to protect them from the prison population, their claim was not covered under
the Alabama Workers' Compensation Act. Accordingly, their claim survived
dismissal and will proceed. Summary: In August 2002, Jamie Bullin, Lisa Johnson
and Tabitha Manuel brought a civil action against Correctional Medical Services
Inc., three individuals employed by the Alabama Department of Corrections, and
several fictitiously named defendants in the Baldwin Circuit Court. The
employees collectively alleged that CMS had negligently failed to formulate
policies for the protection of the employees from the wrongful conduct of the
prison population. The employees said they had been terrorized and caused to
suffer severe and continuing mental anguish and emotional distress as a
proximate result of CMS' omissions. The Baldwin Circuit Court transferred the
cause to the Montgomery Circuit Court, and CMS filed a motion for summary
judgment. CMS alleged that the employees' exclusive remedy was a claim under the
Alabama Workers' Compensation Act. The employees contended that their claim
alleged purely psychological injuries, therefore the claim was outside the scope
of the act's exclusivity provisions. The trial court granted CMS'
summary-judgment motion, and the employees appealed. The Alabama Court of Civil
Appeals held that the employees' claim against CMS was not barred by exclusivity
provisions of Workers' Compensation Act because the employees' injuries were
purely psychological in nature. The "injury" the employees complained
of expressly included mental injuries that had neither been produced nor
proximately caused by physical injury to body. The decision of the lower court
was reversed and remanded.
Donaldson Prison
Jefferson County
Prison Health Services
March 18, 2005 Birmingham News
The administrator over health care at Donaldson Correctional Facility was
fired for failing to improve medical care at the beleaguered lockup, but not
before issuing repeated warnings about inadequate staff. Stephanie Lawson, a
registered nurse employed by the private contractor Prison Health Services, said
she was especially frustrated that no full-time physician was assigned to the
western Jefferson County prison, which houses about 1,625 men. "I was
terminated for lack of progress at the site, and it's an impossible site to
manage with the staff that PHS has allocated for health care," Lawson said.
"It's just wrong." "It really did kind of all tie in," she
said. "How can I be expected in 10 months to turn this place around when
there is not even adequate security?" She spoke highly of the officers but
said they often were tired. A few men sought care in the health unit for chest
pains or headaches. "A body can only take so much," Lawson said.
Lawson's staffing complaints are similar to those raised by Dr. Valda Chijide,
the former HIV doctor at Limestone Prison. Chijide resigned earlier this year
after sending PHS several memos detailing inadequate support and staffing at the
north Alabama prison. Lawson's firing leaves Donaldson minus experienced staff
in the two top posts, overseeing the prison and the health care unit.
March 18, 2005 WHNT19
A fired medical administrator said Donaldson Prison in Jefferson County needs a
full-time doctor before medical care improves at the overcrowded facility.
Stephanie Lawson was fired in early March, the same week Warden Stephen Bullard
was placed on administrative leave after writing a memo about inadequate
staffing and poor conditions. Corrections officials said Bullard was placed on
leave because of health problems associated with his job. Lawson was employed by
the private contractor Prison Health Services. She said she was fired for lack
of improvements in medical care at the prison. Lawson made the comments in an
interview with the Birmingham News. P-H-S has declined to comment on Lawson's
termination or replacement. Her staffing complaints are similar to those raised
by another physician at Limestone Prison. Doctor Valda Chijide resigned earlier
this year after sending P-H-S several memos detailing inadequate support and
staffing at the prison.
Limestone
Correctional Facility
Limestone County, Alabama
Prison Health Services (formerly run by MHM, NaphCare)
December 1, 2009 Huntsville Times
State prison officials today released a 795-page report showing Farron
Barksdale, who killed two police officers, died from hypothermia after being
heavily medicated with anti-psychotic drugs. Barksdale, 32, of Athens, sentenced
to life without parole after pleading guilty to capital murder in the shooting
deaths of two Athens police officers, died Aug. 20, 2007, after he was found
unconscious in his prison cell. After he was rushed to a Montgomery hospital, it
was discovered he had several large, fresh-looking, bruises around his waist,
arms, legs, elbows and knees. But Sarah Geraghty, senior attorney for the
Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, said questions still remain about
how Barksdale received such extensive bruising. The report said Barksdale was
given several different drugs that could cause bruising. And they noted the
special seat belts used to transport Barksdale from the Limestone County Jail to
the Kilby Correctional Facility could also have been responsible for some of the
bruises. When a private ambulance company was summoned to take Barkdale to the
hospital after he collapsed, according to the report, paramedic Angela Anderson
said she "found patient lying on treatment table by himself with distressed
respirations, unresponsive; no medical personnel in room; saw bruises on his
body on abdominal and pelvic area; noted they were unusual for size and location
. . . "Patient had no oxygen therapy being (administered and) there was no
medical personnel in the room (with) the patient the entire time while on scene
only DOC personnel. Patient had several bruises throughout body major-sized
bruises noted anterior on lower abdomen/pelvic area measuring in comparison to a
salad plate covering most of the area from hip joint area to umbilicus. "Color
of bruises indicate newly sustained. Patient also had bruising to both forearms
posterior area in same color as ones noted to abdomen/pelvic area." In addition,
Heath Bruner, an EMT, was quoted in the report as noting "massive" bruising on
both sides of pelvis. He also noted there were no nurses present in the room
with Barksdale at Kilby. Barksdale's mother, Mary, earlier this year won
$750,000 in a wrongful death lawsuit against former Kilby Warden Arnold Holt,
Dr. Joseph McGinn of MHM Correctional Services in Vienna, Va., and Dr. Arnold
Holt of Prison Health Services of Brentwood, Tenn. Ken Williams, general counsel
for the Corrections Department, said Tuesday that McGinn was responsible for
prescribing the drugs to Barksdale and leaving him in an unairconditioned cell
rather than transferring him to an air-conditioned mental health unit.
August 1, 2005 New York Times
If there was ever a prison that needed help, it was Limestone Correctional
Facility. Even within the troubled Alabama penal system, this state compound
near Huntsville was notorious for cruel punishment and medical neglect. In one
drafty, rat-infested warehouse once reserved for chain gangs, the state
quarantined its male prisoners with H.I.V. and AIDS, until the extraordinary
death toll - 36 inmates from 1999 to 2002 - moved inmates to sue and the
government to promise change. Alabama's solution was to fire the local company
in charge of medical care and hire Prison Health Services, the nation's largest
commercial provider of health care behind bars. Prison Health's solution was to
recruit Dr. Valda M. Chijide, an infectious-disease specialist who arrived last
November with a lofty title: statewide coordinator of inmate H.I.V. care. She
was an unlikely candidate for the job in one sense, having never stepped inside
a prison. But it did not take her long to conclude that the chaos was
continuing, and that much of the problem was Prison Health itself. Though the
company had promised the help of other doctors, she said, she was left alone to
care for not only the 230 men in the H.I.V. unit, but the 1,800 other prisoners,
too. Nurses were so poorly trained, Dr. Chijide said, that they neglected to
hand out life-sustaining drugs or gave the wrong ones. Medical charts were a
mess, she said, and often it was impossible to find such basic items as a
thermometer, or even soap. Dr. Chijide lasted barely three months. After she
complained in writing, Prison Health suspended her for reasons it would not
disclose, and she quit. Her short, frantic stint - battling for drugs,
hospitalizations and extra food for skeletal inmates, she said - was not unusual
in the world of Prison Health Services, which has had a turbulent record in many
of the 33 states where it has provided jail or prison medicine. But her story, a
rare firsthand account of a doctor in charge of a prison's health care, offers
an intimate glimpse of the company's work at a moment when the need for change
could not have been more pressing, and the spotlight on Prison Health could
hardly have been more intense. Limestone is not the only
hitch in Prison Health's effort to transform a penal backwater. Two hundred
miles south, at the state's Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, another federal
monitor reported that Prison Health lacked any "organized and structured
medical program," and deplored the care given two inmates who died last
year. There is, of course, a higher authority that Prison
Health must answer to: the state official charged with making sure it lives up
to its contract. That person is Ruth Naglich, who as associate commissioner of
the Alabama Corrections Department is supposed to review the company's work.
Three years ago, Ms. Naglich was a Prison Health executive, vice president for
sales and marketing, at the company's headquarters outside Nashville.
May 6, 2005 Birmingham News
Prison Health Services has been under the gun, and rightly so, for the way
it's provided medical care to Alabama inmates. The Tennessee-based company was
hired to improve health care in Alabama prisons, which had been sued over
services provided by a previous contractor. But the care in prisons remains
unacceptable. A recurring theme is a shortage of doctors, nurses and other staff
to tend to the inmates, with predictable consequences. At best, the care has
been inadequate. At worst, it may have been downright deadly. The state of
Alabama, which has the ultimate responsibility (and liability) for what happens
to prisoners in its custody, has every reason to demand better from Prison
Health Services. And withholding part of the company's payment is an appropriate
place to start. The state is reducing the company's $143 million contract by
$1.2 million for staffing shortages, and may cut more if staffing levels aren't
increased. Why not? The state is paying Prison Health Services to provide a
certain number of professionals and support staff to administer inmates' health
care. If the company is not meeting the requirements of the contract, it should
not expect to be paid as if it were. Besides, what's really at stake here is
bigger than money. Too many inmates are not receiving proper care for chronic
conditions, and some are dying unnecessarily as a result, according to doctors
who monitor prison health care for the courts. At the Tutwiler women's prison,
the monitor found that three inmates who died last year received poor or
incomplete care, and two of them may have died as a result. At Limestone
Correctional Facility, which houses HIV-positive inmates, the monitor found
prisoners weren't getting crucial medication and that a required HIV specialist
was not on staff. It's true that turnover has been a big problem. Prison Health
Services has had problems retaining doctors and other health care workers; some
have left complaining they didn't have the resources to do their jobs. But the
bottom line is that the company agreed to provide a certain level of services,
and it has been failing to do so. At the very least, the state should adjust the
payments to Prison Health Services accordingly. So the company is losing
dollars. Inmates are losing their lives.
May 5, 2005 Birmingham News
Alabama's prison medical provider is losing $1.2 million from the state
because it has not provided enough doctors and nurses to state prisons. Prison
Health Services has not fulfilled minimal contract requirements that call for a
certain number of doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff. The company
is not being fined, Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said, but
DOC will not have to pay $1.2 million of its contract. The department hired PHS
in November 2003. The company's three-year, $143 million contract could see more
reductions if the medical staff does not increase. Tennessee-based Prison Health
Services also has come under fire in recent months by physicians who are
monitoring two prisons under federal court settlements. A lawsuit alleging
inadequate medical care is pending at a third prison, the Hamilton Aged and
Infirm facility, where the oldest, sickest men are housed. Dr. Michael Puisis,
court monitor at Tutwiler Prison for Women, said in a March report that prison
medical staff provided poor or incomplete care to three inmates who died last
year. He suggested that negligence might have led to two of those deaths. The
third, a suicide, was likely the result of inadequate care by mental health
workers, who are employed by a different company. Two deaths since then are
still under investigation. Still, attorneys for the
Limestone inmates have asked the federal courts to hold the state in contempt
for failing to abide by the conditions of the settlement. Last year, the state
agreed to dozens of improvements, centering on added medical staff and more
humane housing conditions. Doctors keep leaving, some after claiming PHS did not
allow them the flexibility and resources to practice medicine as they want to
do. "There are just as many complaints raised after the settlement as
before," said Gretchen Rohr, an attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern
Center for Human Rights, who represents Alabama prisons in both cases.
April 29, 2005 Tuscaloosa News
Recent complaints by HIV inmates over medical attention at Limestone prison
are "misleading and inaccurate," attorneys for the prison system and
its health provider said in asking a federal judge to dismiss a contempt motion.
The attorneys' filing says the state Department of Corrections and Prison
Healthcare Services have taken adequate steps to comply with a settlement over
housing and medical care for some 240 HIV inmates at the state prison in
Limestone County. The document was in response to a complaint filed last week by
inmate attorneys at the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights. The
complaint said the prison system and health provider have yet to show they are
carrying out any plan to correct "extensive noncompliant acts."
Southern Center attorney Gretchen Rohr said the plaintiffs have asked U.S.
District Court Judge Karon Bowdre in Birmingham to hold the state in contempt of
court for failing to follow the April 2004 settlement. Though
DOC and PHS concede that they don't have a permanent HIV specialist as required
by the settlement, they "have worked tirelessly to retain" one,
according to the court filing. They said several candidates have lost interest
in the position after learning about the highly publicized complaints of the
plaintiffs. The
post opened after Dr. Valda Chijidi resigned earlier this year. He had sent PHS
several memos detailing inadequate support and staffing at the north Alabama
prison. The plaintiffs allege that inmates still have to provide
emergency care to other inmates because an adequate nursing staff is not
available - a claim denied by the prison and PHS. Rohr said she appreciates the
efforts to improve conditions at Limestone, but remains skeptical about the plan
actually being implemented. "For a long time we've been hearing that they
have a plan and voluntarily are taking action. Not to rain on your parade, but
we've heard it before," she said.
February 19, 2005 WPMI
Attorneys for 240 HIV-positive prisoners at Limestone Correctional Facility have
accused prison officials of violating an agreement to improve their medical
care. The north Alabama prison has no specialist for them and has constant gaps
in medication, the attorneys claim in a contempt motion filed Thursday in U.S.
District Court. The attorneys have asked U.S. District Court Judge Karon Bowdre
in Birmingham to hold the state in contempt of court for failing to follow the
April 2004 settlement in a lawsuit over inmate housing and medical care.
Department of Corrections attorney Kim Thomas said Friday she couldn't comment
on the motion until she has read it. According to the motion, two physicians,
hired in the last eight months as part of the settlement, recently resigned. One
of the doctor's memos detailed dozens of medical shortcomings, including a rat
in the exam room and chaotic record-keeping. Dr. Valda Chijide wrote of being
unable to care for patients because of disorganization in the medical unit and
because prison staff has overruled her medical decisions. Once she walked in on
a heart patient with chest pains who was trying to give himself nitroglycerin
because no nurse was in sight, she wrote. "The law of diminishing returns
sets in after riding on a skeletal staff and scanty resources for so long,"
Chijide wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to supervisors at Prison Health Services, the
private prison medical company that Alabama contracts with to provide medical
care at all state prisons. Now, one physician handles care for more than 2,200
prisoners, including the HIV Unit. A PHS supervisor in Montgomery also has been
filling in, Keldie said. "The state is ultimately the one who is
responsible for the medical care and the state should be forcing PHS to
implement the settlement agreement that we've reached," said Joshua Lipman,
a Southern Center for Human Rights attorney. "What they've done so far is
pretty appalling."
May 25, 2004
A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit against the state Department of
Corrections and its former medical provider, claiming HIV-positive inmates at
Limestone Correctional Facility were not given adequate health care. The
settlement, reached after several months of negotiations mediated by Magistrate
Judge John Ott, was filed in the federal district court in Birmingham on Friday.
The terms of the settlement, set to be signed at a hearing Wednesday, were
not disclosed. David Lipman, attorney for the four HIV-positive inmates
named as plaintiffs in the suit, has argued that prison medical provider
NaphCare Inc. did not adequately treat the inmates and ultimately hastened some
inmate deaths in 2002. The Department of Corrections has since changed
medical providers. (Gainesville Sun)
March 19, 2004
Some of the sickest men in Alabama prisons live in drafty cells in a building
with broken windows. They must stand in line in the middle of the night for
their pills. And several have died prematurely because of gaps in medical care,
according to a report released Thursday as part of a lawsuit against the prison
system. Dr. Stephen Tabet, an infectious disease
specialist from Seattle, first documented the harsh conditions at Limestone
prison's HIV unit last year. When he returned for a follow-up visit, he found
few improvements. "More strongly than ever, I feel the Limestone
Correctional Facility is in dire need of outside intervention and
oversight," Tabet wrote after his Feb. 23 visit to the prison, where all of
Alabama's male HIV-positive inmates, about 250 men, are housed. "Patients
continue to die because of the failure of the medical system," he wrote.
The Department of Corrections strongly disagrees with the report's conclusions,
a spokesman said. "It is important to note that this report is
written by a trial witness, hired by plaintiff lawyers," said DOC spokesman
Brian Corbett. Tabet has been reviewing HIV Unit medical care for the
Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based law firm representing
HIV-infected prisoners in a class-action lawsuit against the state. His
August 2003 report documented conditions leading to 39 deaths since 1999.
Thursday's follow-up looks at five new deaths in five months. One patient
dropped a third of his weight in five months, to 110 pounds, before dying in
February. A doctor prescribed a high protein supplement for 35-year-old Gerald
Lewis, but the kitchen wouldn't provide it. Another man arrived at
Limestone with active tuberculosis, but his medical records from another prison
did not follow. Alfred Thomas, 42, was placed with all the other HIV patients,
potentially exposing them to the disease. No one at Limestone knew about his TB
until an autopsy following his October death. Prisoner Nathan Sullivan
began suffering with low oxygen levels a week before he died. "I am so
sick, I can't even walk," he told a nurse who made notes in his files.
"Inmate crying, praying to God to deliver him from his illness. Achy head
to toe, nausea, headache, diarrhea after taking meds," she wrote.
Sullivan was suffocating, and died at a Huntsville hospital. Ambulance personnel
initially refused to take him from the prison because of his oxygen level,
according to the specialist's report. One of Tabet's gravest concerns is
lack of critical medication and middle-of-the-night pill call. "The pill
line is a disaster," he wrote. Many medications were not on hand, and
patients were sent away without them, Tabet wrote. Not all bad news:
There have been some improvements since Tabet's first report. Before, the
HIV inmates lived in a crowded, converted warehouse. Currently, they live in
cells in another building. But some of the windows are broken and covered with
plastic or blankets. The doctor called the situation "unbearable for these
immune-compromised patients." The prison added a part-time physician
to its previous staffing of one physician, but staffing remains below the
National Commission on Correctional Health Care guideline of 110-physician hours
per week for a prison with 2,200 inmates. Since Tabet's first visit, DOC
has switched medical contractors and spends more money on prisoners' care
systemwide. The department hired Tennessee-based Prison Health Services
for medical care and Mental Health Management Services for mental health care in
November. The 3-year contracts are worth $172 million. Previously,
Birmingham-based Naphcare held the contract which costs the state $135 million
over three years. Prison Health Services officials issued a written
response to the report, but declined to answer questions. Company Vice
President Larry Pomeroy described the medical care as appropriate and high
quality. "All clinical and operation policies implemented by PHS
within the ADOC system, including the Limestone facility, are in compliance with
national standards of health care delivery as established by the National
Commission of Correctional Health Care," Pomeroy wrote. Corbett at
DOC said, "... we are in the process of addressing the complaints and
resolving the issues in compliance with national health care standards as
established by the National Commission of Correctional Health Care."
Alabama's prisoner health care costs remain the lowest in the country. The state
spends about $5.50 per prisoner per day. The national average is $7.38.
Despite the new contract, much of the Limestone medical staff has not changed
since before the lawsuit was filed, said Gretchen Rohr, an attorney with the
Southern Center for Human Rights. "It's key they somehow show us that the
new contract has been properly implemented," Rohr said. "We have not
seen any evidence of this implementation." The trial in the Limestone
case has been scheduled to begin May 17 before U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre.
(Al.com)
August 29, 2003
A health care contractor blasted for allegedly inadequate care of
HIV-infected patients at Limestone Correctional Facility plans to bid for
another statewide contract with the Department of Corrections on Sept. 10.
A 125-page report released Wednesday by Dr. Stephen Tabet, hired by plaintiffs
in a lawsuit, said poor medical care and inadequate facilities caused or
accelerated many HIV-related deaths at the Capshaw prison. A spokesman for
the contractor providing the Capshaw prison's health care, Birmingham-based
NaphCare Inc., said his company is complying with all department requirements,
but NaphCare's $29.5 million contract with the state, covering all state
prisons, dictates staffing levels. The Limestone prison houses 2,260
prisoners, about 200 with HIV. NaphCare spokesman David Davis said his
company has handled the DOC's health care only since March 2001. He said there
have been only 14 HIV-related deaths at Capshaw since . Tabet discussed 38
deaths in his report, but many occurred before 2001. "Dr. Tabet's
engaged by, employed by, and I suspect wants to be employed again by, the
plaintiff," Davis said. "Obviously the plaintiff does not
understand the contract that NaphCare operates under with the DOC, Davis said.
DOC Commissioner Donal Campbell notified NaphCare of his intent to terminate its
contract shortly after Gov. Bob Riley appointed him to the post. Davis
said NaphCare will submit a bid higher than its current charges because of more
stringent DOC requirements. (Decatur Daily)
Mobile County
Metro Jail
Mobile, Alabama
Correctional Medical Services
January 28, 2006 Mobile Register
A woman who was jailed in Mobile last year went into a diabetic shock and nearly
died because officers and medical staff denied her proper medication and ignored
her problems, a federal lawsuit claims. The suit, filed last month in U.S.
District Court, seeks unspecified damages from Mobile County Sheriff Jack
Tillman, Warden Mike Haley, the private company that provides medical services
and several employees of the firm and the jail. Lawyers for the Mobile County
Sheriff's Office and Correctional Medical Services denied the allegations in
written responses filed in court this month. Lofton, 33, was booked into the
jail Feb. 23 on a charge of driving on a revoked license. The insulin-dependent
diabetic was not evaluated until 10 hours later, according to the complaint. The
lawsuit states that Lofton told medical personnel that she takes two shots of
insulin every day, but staffers did not provide her with any insulin until 4
p.m. the following day. At that time, according to the suit, medical staffers at
the jail gave her insulin from a bottle given to all diabetic detainees.
March 5, 2005 Mobile Register
A federal prisoner who was being held at Mobile County Metro Jail tried to
commit suicide shortly after officials took away his anti-depression medication,
according to documents filed in U.S. District Court. Sean Gaston Atwood's lawyer
asked a federal judge in December to transfer the man to a federal medical
facility. The motion, which Chief U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade granted Dec.
9, states that Atwood tried to hang himself less than a month after his arrest
Oct. 27 for escaping from the custody of U.S. marshals. Atwood had been
prescribed a drug called seroquel by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but Metro
Jail staff took it away amid concerns that other inmates had abused the
medication, according to the motion. Assistant Federal Defender Lyn Hillman said
jail staff indicated that they had banned the medicine because some inmates had
been using it to get high. She said a doctor should have examined her client and
replaced the drug with another medication. Jail Warden Mike Haley declined to
discuss Atwood's case in detail, citing federal privacy laws regarding medical
treatment. He said medical personnel working for Correctional Medical Services,
a St. Louis firm hired by the jail to provide health care, determine which drugs
inmates receive. Haley referred other inquiries to Dr. Charles Smith, a Mobile
psychiatrist who works for Correctional Medical Services. "Within that one
question that you have asked, there are a half-dozen thorny questions, difficult
questions," said Smith, who declined to comment further.
Perry County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center
Uniontown, Alabama
Louisiana Correctional Services
June 24, 2009 Park Rapids Enterprise
Ashton Mink was arrested after a nearly 14-hour standoff June 6, on a ranch
south of Gladstone. Authorities say Mink and his wife, Jacquelin, were wounded
in an exchange of gunfire. Authorities say one of four Alabama fugitives has
been transferred from a Dickinson hospital to jail. Ashton Mink was arrested
after a nearly 14-hour standoff June 6, on a ranch south of Gladstone.
Authorities say Mink and his wife, Jacquelin, were wounded in an exchange of
gunfire. Stark County Sheriff Clarence Tuhy said Ashton Mink was released
Tuesday from a Dickinson hospital and taken to jail. He is awaiting a bail
hearing. Jacquelin Mink is hospitalized in Bismarck. The couple along with
Ashton Mink's sister Angela and Joshua Southwick, face charges of conspiracy to
commit murder and conspiracy to commit robbery. They are accused of robbing a
movie store in Dickinson and shooting at a Highway Patrol trooper. Authorities
say Southwick and Ashton Mink escaped from an Alabama prison in May and that
Angela and Jacquelin Mink helped them.
June 10, 2009 Athens News-Courier
Tom Henning, state’s attorney in Stark County, N.D., said it’s possible the
four people accused in an escape from an Alabama prison facility will remain
imprisoned in North Dakota for some time. If convicted, the group could serve
sentences there before being returned to Alabama to face charges of escape.
“Yes, they could end up spending jail time in North Dakota, presuming
convictions and at such time as we’re satisfied, then they’ll go back to the
demanding state,” he said. Joshua Southwick, who was convicted in the 2003
slaying of a Limestone County man, and Ashton Mink, convicted of attempted
murder in a stabbing during a home invasion in Madison, escaped from the Perry
County Correctional Facility in Uniontown, Ala., on May 25. U.S. Marshals say
Angela Mink, Ashton’s sister, and Jacquelin Mink, his wife, cut the fence from
the outside of the private prison facility to help the two get free. The four
were captured in Gladstone, N.D., Saturday during a video store robbery.
Southwick and Angela gave themselves up but Ashton and Jacquelin held officers
at bay for 14 hours. They were shot in the process. Ashton is under armed guard
at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Health Center in Dickinson, N.D. His wife is under
armed guard at St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, N.D., Henning said. “I
have no idea when they will be able to go to court,” he said. “I’d say at least
a month.” In the meantime, Southwick and Angela Mink are being held at Southwest
Multi-County Correctional Facility, each charged with criminal conspiracy to
commit robbery, which carries a 10-year maximum sentence. “It’s entirely likely
there will be more charges” stemming from the standoff and shootout, Henning
said.
June 9, 2009 Bennington Banner
Vermont officials said Monday they made the right decision in March when the
state removed about 80 Vermont inmates from a private, for-profit prison in
Alabama where two inmates recently escaped. Needed improvement -- Vermont
Department of Corrections Commissioner Andrew Pallito said Vermont pulled the
inmates out of the Perry County Correctional Center in Uniontown, Ala., prison,
which is run by LCS Corrections Services in March. The first Vermont inmate was
transferred to the facility in late December he said. The prison, which has more
than 700 beds, had security equipment that did not work and an inadequately
trained staff "for what we were asking them to do," Pallito said. "It wasn't
what we were after. It wasn't what I would have expected," he said. Pallito said
the Department of Corrections leveled several demands on LCS to improve, but did
not see action fast enough, and pulled inmates out about two weeks later. State
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said he had doubts
about the facility before the Vermont inmates were transferred. Once the inmates
were moved, Sears said the facility failed to "keep up with things that were in
the contract." And there were issues with the "treatment of offenders." "We sent
some people down there and there were continued problems. I was very skeptical
myself," Sears said. "Turned out there were a lot of problems and they moved
them all out." "It was a real loose outfit," Sears added. "There have been some
real problems there." The Associated Press reported Monday that two men who
escaped from the Perry County Correctional Center on May 25 were recaptured
Saturday following a shoot-out with police. According to the Associated Press,
Alabama Prison Commissioner Richard Allen said all 250 of Alabama's inmates will
be removed from the facility. Allen cited cost, however, not security concerns,
as the reason for removing inmates. Pallito said Vermont has an ongoing contract
with LCS Corrections Services, but it allows for a "zero minimum," meaning the
state can have no inmates at the facility and pay nothing. The contract term is
for two years, he said. Inmates housed briefly at the Alabama facility have been
moved to facilities in Kentucky or Tennessee run by Corrections Corporation of
America. Vermont had a contract with CCA when it looked to diversify as a
cost-savings measure. Pallito said CCA agreed to take back the inmates at the
$50 per day rate the Alabama facility was charging. It costs the state about
$140 per day to house inmates in-state. Vermont currently has about 2,200
inmates and only 1,500 instate beds. The contract with CCA will expire next
year, according to Pallito, so the state will need to renegotiate a contract.
Pallito said LCS officials have recently tried to persuade the state to send
inmates back to the Alabama facility, but that is not likely to happen. "Not at
this time, particularly given the recent development of events," he said. "We're
interested in talking with other facilities, but I don't think we'll be back
with them."
June 8, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Alabama's prison commissioner says the state will remove about 250 inmates from
the private prison where two men recently escaped amid a string of security
failures. However, Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen said Monday that money
- not the threat of additional escapes - was behind the decision. In an
interview Monday with The Associated Press, Allen said his agency can't afford
to continue housing 250 inmates at the Perry County Detention Center. An
executive at LCS Corrections Inc., which runs the prison, said he knew of the
state's plan. He said the company was told the state could place twice as many
inmates at the private prison next year if lawmakers approve funding.
June 6, 2009 KFYR TV
Four of America's Most Wanted fugitives were arrested Saturday in western
North Dakota. The group started out in Alabama earlier in the week and came to
North Dakota where police say they went on a crime spree. By Saturday night, two
of the suspects were recovering in a Dickinson-area hospital after being shot by
police after a standoff in Gladstone. That was the culmination of a series of
crimes that started with a robbery Friday night in Dickinson and included shots
being fired at a North Dakota Highway Patrol trooper during a chase. Let's take
you back a week and set the stage that led to these events. Police had been
looking for 26-year-old Joshua Southwick, and 22-year-old Ashton Mink since they
escaped from an Alabama prison on Memorial Day. Mink was serving a 20-year
sentence for 1st degree assault. Southwick was serving a life sentence for
murder and 1st degree burglary. Authorities say they escaped prison in Alabama
by wearing kitchen workers` uniforms The pair allegedly fled through holes that
were cut out of the prison fence by Ashton Mink's wife, Jacquelin, and sister
Angela Mink. Somewhere along the way, all four made it to North Dakota. The
trouble in North Dakota started in Dickinson Friday night around 11:00, when the
suspects, two men and two women, robbed a movie rental store. The foursome fled,
and a Highway Patrol trooper noticed a suspicious car speeding away. The trooper
followed the car onto I-94, and that's when passenger in the suspects` car fired
at the trooper. At least one bullet went into the trooper's car. The fleeing car
continued east to Gladstone prompting the Highway Patrol to lock down the small
town. Authorities blocked off a two-mile section of road leading into town.
Police kept an eye on things during as residents were notified of the threat
through a reverse 911 system. Gladstone resident Kim Hetzel says, "After we got
the automated phone call early this morning, get up, and lock the doors, and
kinda just watch out." Authorities found the suspects after the owner of a
farmstead noticed the four were staking out in his detached garage. Stark County
sheriff Clarence Tuhy says, "They're from the Alabama area; the two males are
escapees from a private prison in the Alabama area which were aided in escape by
the two females." The perps took refuge in the farmstead's garage as more than a
half dozen agencies flocked to the area. About 12 hours later Tuhy says, "A male
and a female came out giving up peacefully at which time a male and female came
out a side door firing at officers." Officers then fired back, striking both
Ashton Mink and his wife, Jacquelin. The couple is being treated at an area
hospital. So far, there's no word on the conditions of the two suspects who were
shot. No officers were injured, and Joshua Southwick and Angela Mink were taken
into custody. "Any time no officers get injured is a good thing," notes Tuhy.
But while no officers or residents were hurt physically, it will take a long
time for the emotional scars of this almost surreal crime to heal.
June 5, 2009 WAFF
It's been more than week since Joshua Southwick, 26 and Ashton Mink, 22,
escaped from a private prison in Perry County. Now there's new information on
the two women who helped them escape and what the prison is doing to keep this
from happening again. New pictures are surfacing of Angela Diana Mink. A tattoo
artist by trade, the pictures show specific tattoos which may assist the public
in recognizing her. Tattoos are on both upper and lower arms, and both wrists,
plus one at the base of her neck. Perry County prison officials said they
believe she and Jacquelin Rae Kennamer Mink cut through an electrical stun fence
to help Mink and Southwick escape. It was a single cut that did in fact trip an
alarm to alert the control room operator on the prison. "That stun fence, if
it's touched, cut or grounded, sets off an alarm in our central control unit,"
said Richard Harbison, the executive dirctor of the corporation that owns the
private prison. "Evidently because of the weather, the alarm after it was
sounded, no one went to the fence to check and see if it was cut." And because
of that, Harbison said there's been an overhaul at the unit. "We dismissed seven
people, two of which were shift captains for failure to carry out correct
policies and procedures at the unit," he said. Others included correctional
officers and the control room officer that failed to follow proper procedures.
"We have proper procedures in place to ensure that something like this doesn't
happen. If you fail to follow those proper procedures, then you more likely to
have an escape such as this one," he said. Also overhauled is the system that
alerts officials when security has been breached. Now, the warden, deputy warden
and chief security officer will all be notified automatically. Officials have
also raised the level of security at the prison to just below the level of a
maximum security prison. That's a move that won't happen overnight, but one much
anticipated.
June 5, 2009 AP
A U.S. Marshals Service inspector said two women cut holes through three
fences at a private prison in Perry County, enabling a convicted murderer and
another prisoner to escape. The fugitives -- 22-year-old Ashton Kenny Chase Mink
and 26-year-old Joshua Loyd Southwick -- were being sought Thursday after their
escape from the Perry County Corrections Center about 5:30 a.m. on May 25.
Rewards totaling $15,000 were being offered. Dick Harbison, the vice president
of operations for Lafayette, La.-based LCS Corrections Services, said two shift
captains and five guards were fired for not adequately supervising the
prisoners. Inspector Ross Herbert with the Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task
Force said 25-year-old Angela Diana Mink, Ashton Mink's sister, and 25-year-old
Jacquelin Rae Kennamer Mink, his wife, are accused of cutting the holes in three
perimeter fences.
June 3, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Two women cut holes in the prison fences at Perry County Corrections Center
in Uniontown last week, allowing a convicted murder and another prisoner to
escape, a U.S. Marshals Service inspector said. Ashton Mink, 22, and Joshua Loyd
Southwick, 26, escaped from the private prison about 5:30 a.m. on May 25. Angela
Diana Mink, Mink’s sister, and Jacquelin Rae Kennamer Mink, his wife, allegedly
cut holes in the perimeter fence, said Inspector Ross Hebert with the Gulf Coast
Regional Fugitive Task Force. The Alabama Department of Corrections has obtained
warrants to charge the women, both 25, with aiding the escape of state
prisoners. They also have warrants to charge all four with unlawful flight to
avoid prosecution, he said. Authorities believe that the four are armed and
dangerous. Records indicate that in early May, Jacquelin Mink purchased a
.380-caliber gun that was found near the escape scene. She is known to carry a
semi-automatic pistol and owns several other handguns and longarms, Hebert said.
June 2, 2009 WAFF
Officers have confirmed a description of the vehicle that two escapees
convicted in North Alabama may be driving, and agencies across the state are on
the lookout for it. It has been more than a week since 26-year-old Joshua
Southwick and 22-year-old Ashton Mink escaped from a private prison in Perry
County. "The inmates are still at large and the search continues," said Brian
Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections. State troopers
confirm the two men are believed to be traveling in a pewter 2000 GMC Jimmy,
with Madison County tag 47A1F2. Corbett told WAFF 48 News a division of the U.S.
Marshals is leading the search. "The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive
Task Force, they are the entity that are spearheading the search and
investigation into their recapture," he said. Southwick was serving a life
sentence after pleading guilty to murder and burglary for the 2003 shooting
death of Michael Bryant on Hays Mill Road in Elkmont in Limestone County. Mink
was serving time for attempted murder in connection with a 2005 Huntsville home
invasion. Investigators said he stabbed Jarold Lee several times in his
apartment. "You absolutely have to consider them armed and dangerous," Corbett
said. Investigators said someone helped them cut through three fences to make
their escape.
May 29, 2009 WAAY TV
New information on two inmates who escaped from an Alabama prison. Joshua
Southwick and Ashton Mink broke out of a private prison in Perry County on
Monday. Southwick was serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to a 2003
murder-for-hire case in Limestone County. Mink was serving time for an attempted
murder in Huntsville four years ago. Police now believe both men are travelling
with Mink's sister and another woman. The four may be on their way to Mexico.
Police say they are armed and dangerous, and say the prisoners claim that they
will not be taken alive.
May 28, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Authorities believe that two men who escaped from a private prison in Perry
County early Monday morning had outside help. Joshua Southwick, 26, and Ashton
Mink, 22, escaped the Perry County Detention Center in Uniontown after someone
helped them cut through three fences. Southwick is serving a life sentence after
pleading guilty in a 2003 murder-for-hire case in Limestone County. Mink, 22,
was serving time for an attempted murder conviction in Madison County in 2005.
The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Task Force, which includes members of several law
enforcement agencies and five members of the Department of Corrections, are
still looking for the men. Prison Warden Tommy Buford did not answer phone calls
from a Tuscaloosa News reporter Tuesday or Wednesday. A prison employee referred
calls to Dick Harbison, the vice-president of Lafayette, La.-based LCS
Corrections Services, which owns and operates the prison. Harbison did not
return a call placed to his cell phone Wednesday afternoon. The 734-bed facility
houses prisoners from Alabama and other states in addition to federal prisoners.
The state’s Department of Corrections does not have oversight of the company’s
management or security practices at the prison because it is a private
corporation. The Department of Corrections pays the company $32 a day to house
249 state inmates, less than the $41.71 it costs to house them in a state
facility, spokesman Brian Corbett said. He said that the department has not had
problems with the Uniontown facility or the company, which housed Alabama
inmates in Louisiana because of prison overcrowding between 2003 and 2006. Until
last month, the prison also housed around 80 prisoners from Vermont, but the
Vermont Department of Corrections removed those inmates after an investigation
into prisoner complaints that they had been injured in fights with other
inmates, said Seth Lipshutz, the supervising attorney in Vermont’s Prisoners’
Rights Office. The prisoners complained to the Prisoners’ Rights Office, a
branch of the state’s Office of the Defender General. Lipshutz said that an
investigator with his office conducted an investigation followed by an
independent investigation from the state’s Department of Corrections. “They were
letting the inmates run the asylum,” he said. The staff and management did not
pay adequate attention to security, he said, which resulted in inmate-on-inmate
violence and the smuggling of items such as drugs and cell phones into the
facility. “Drugs get into a lot of prisons, but cell phones don’t get into
many,” Lipshutz said. “It doesn’t take long to figure out why this would be a
problem.” He said that inmates complained that an assistant warden boasted that
he was drunk while driving the bus from Vermont to Uniontown and behaved
unprofessionally when he threatened to shoot them if they tried to escape during
a dinner stop at a fast-food restaurant. Lipshutz said that Vermont, one of the
country’s smallest and least-populated states, sends around 700 of its 2,200
prisoners to out-of-state facilities because it costs roughly $140 per day to
house them in in-state prisons. Prices in Vermont are high for several reasons,
he said, including union wages, small prisons and snowy weather that makes
transportation between facilities difficult. Many of the state’s prisoners are
housed in detention centers owned by Corrections Corp. of America, the first
company to open private prisons more than 25 years ago. “I’m not too keen on the
privatization of prisons. This is an example of how things go wrong,” Lipshutz
said. Ken Kopczynski is the executive director of Private Corrections Institute,
a private prison watchdog group based in Tallahassee, Fla. The organization’s
mission is to provide information and assistance to citizens, policy makers and
journalists about what they consider the dangers of privatizing correctional
institutions and service. Kopczynski said no records are kept on the number of
escapes from private prisons. The last records kept, he said, were in 2002 and
indicated that escape rates are higher at private institutions. The institute
compiles media reports of incidents at private facilities on its Web site.
According to their information, an inmate who had been on suicide watch died at
a LCS facility in Texas in January. At least 15 escapes were reported at some of
the company’s prisons in Texas and Louisiana since 2002, according to the
institute. The Texas Prison Board conducted a review of the Eastern Hidalgo
Detention Center in 2006 after six inmates escaped. The review found that the
prison employed too few guards, added an unauthorized number of bunks and kept
unlicensed guards and guards without adequate training on payroll, according to
a news story from The Monitor, a newspaper in the area. The company president
said at the time that those problems were later corrected. The six inmates
escaped, company officials said, after someone tampered with a control box for
the electrical fence surrounding the prison. Perry County prison guards noticed
that Southwick and Mink were not in bed during a 5:20 a.m. bed check. After
inspecting the perimeter, they noticed that the fences had been cut.
May 27, 2009 Seven Days
The Vermont Department of Corrections [1] has pulled all of its inmates out of a
privately run prison in Alabama after a state investigation confirmed that some
of the men had been injured by their fellow inmates. The investigation was
launched after the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office [2] began receiving reports
from clients who claimed inadequate security at Perry County Detention Center
led to the inmate-on-inmate violence. The April withdrawal of some 80 Vermont
offenders from the 734-bed facility in Uniontown, Alabama, occurred just five
months after the state signed its first-ever contract with a new private prison
vendor: LCS Corrections Services. Based in Lafayette, Louisiana, the for-profit
prison company houses some 6000 inmates in eight facilities throughout the
South. Deputy Commissioner of Corrections Lisa Menard said last week that the
state had been looking for an alternative prison vendor in an effort to “expand
our options” and “ultimately save the taxpayers money.” Vermont was paying LCS
$49.50 per day per inmate. Its other out-of-state vendor, Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), charges $67 per day to house Vermont inmates.
In-state prisoners cost $140 per day. Vermont currently has about 680 inmates in
out-of-state prisons, mostly in two facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee. Both
are owned by CCA, the nation’s largest for-profit prison vendor. According to
Menard, all the Vermont inmates from the Alabama detention center have since
been moved to CCA prisons or returned to Vermont. Asked why the Vermont inmates
were withdrawn, Menard initially said, “Vermont has high standards as far as
conditions of confinement. Basically, this facility didn’t feel like the best
fit for us, without getting into a great deal of detail.” Probed further about
the alleged reports of abuse, Menard later confirmed the stories were true. “We
did get reports from offenders that there was some assaultive behavior
happening,” she confirmed. “When we checked into that, we found that it … was
accurate. Unfortunately, this was Vermont inmates committing assaults on other
Vermont inmates.” Menard downplayed the severity of the injuries, noting that
none was life-threatening and they were “basically bruises, that type of thing.”
But that’s not how a lawyer in the prisoners’ rights office in Montpelier
characterized the situation in Alabama. Managing Attorney Seth Lipschutz called
it “a total disaster.” According to Lipschutz, his office received reports of
alleged lax security, contraband being smuggled into the facility, and
inadequate bureaucratic procedures being followed for addressing inmates’
grievances. There was even one allegation of a corrections officer being
intoxicated while transporting Vermont inmates to the prison. “They were letting
the inmates run the asylum,” Lipschutz added. “It was a system where the strong
were taking advantage of the weak.” Concerned about their clients’ safety, the
prisoners’ rights office notified the Vermont Department of Corrections, which,
according to Lipschutz, “acted on it right away and got the inmates out of there
as soon as possible.” Lipschutz also characterized the inmates’ injuries as more
serious than DOC let on. “There were some people who got beat up,” he claimed.
“There were more than cuts and bruises. I think some people had to go to the
hospital.” He put the number of inmates involved in such incidents at “maybe two
dozen.” But Deputy Commissioner Menard denied that the problems in Perry were
the result of poor security. Instead, she blamed the problem on the physical
design of the prison itself, which featured a “more open floor plan … that
didn’t work well.” Richard Harbison, executive vice president of LCS Corrections
Services, echoed that sentiment. “The physical plant in Perry, frankly, was not
very conducive to the type of inmates they sent us,” he said. “That prison was
designed for low-custody levels and the inmates [Vermont] sent us were of a
higher-custody level.” Harbison said he wasn’t aware of any Vermont inmates
being hospitalized. “It’s the prison business and these guys are going to get
into fights,” he admitted. “But as far as someone being seriously injured, I’m
sorry, not to my knowledge.” Whether the injuries at the Alabama prison were due
to lax security or a “more open floor plan,” the choice of this particular
prison appeared problematic from the get-go. Back in November, when the DOC
signed its contract with LCS, then-Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann
pointed out that the new facility would only be taking Vermont offenders who
were “unacceptable to be placed with a majority of other prisoners.” In other
words, the more dangerous inmates with behavioral problems. According to
Lipschutz, the Perry County Detention Center is used mostly as a holding
facility for people arrested on federal immigration violations by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those detainees don’t even have a
criminal record. Members of the Vermont House of Representatives’ Committee of
Corrections were notified of the move only after the inmates had been withdrawn
from Alabama, but weren’t told the reason why. “I felt, from our discussions
with the commissioner, that it was not a comfortable situation,” said Rep. Linda
Myers, vice chair of that committee. Asked if she knew that Vermonters had been
beaten up and injured in Alabama, she said she’d heard word of it, “but I can’t
say I heard it from the Department of Corrections.” Though Lipschutz credits
corrections officials for their prompt response, he sees this episode as
symptomatic of the larger systemic problems associated with the for-profit
prison industry, which he described as “always a race to the bottom. LCS “came
in with a low, low price to take these Vermont inmates,” he added, “which is
very attractive to state governments in these tough economic times.”
May 27, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Law enforcement officials were still searching Tuesday for two prisoners, one of
them a convicted murderer, who escaped from a private prison in Perry County
early Monday morning. Joshua Southwick, 26, was serving a life sentence after
pleading guilty in a 2003 murder-for-hire case in Limestone County. Ashton Mink,
22, was serving time for an attempted murder conviction in Madison County in
2005. He was accused of stabbing Huntsville television and radio reporter Jarold
Lee during a personal dispute in 2004, according to media reports at the time.
He is not scheduled to be released until 2028. The Alabama Department of
Corrections leases bed space from the private Perry County Detention Facility in
Uniontown, department spokesman Brian Corbett said. The inmates disappeared some
time early Monday. The prison warden did not answer several phone calls Tuesday
because he was in meetings related to the inmates' escape. An official at the
prison who did not give her name said that guards conducting a bed check at 5:20
a.m. noticed that the inmates were missing. A check of the perimeter revealed
that a fence had been cut from the outside, she said.
May 26, 2009 Tuscaloosa News
Authorities are searching for two state prisoners who escaped from a private
prison in Perry County Monday. Joshua Southwick, 26, is serving a life sentence
after pleading guilty to a 2003 murder-for-hire case in Limestone County. Ashton
Mink, 22, was serving time for an attempted murder conviction in Madison County
in 2005. He is not scheduled for release until 2028. The Alabama Department of
Corrections leases bed space from the private facility in Uniontown. The inmates
disappeared some time Monday. Authorities were unavailable Tuesday morning
because they were in a meeting to discuss the escapes. More details will be
available today.
May 3, 2006 Selma Times Journal
The city of Uniontown welcomed a new business Wednesday, one which is likely
to employee more than 100 Perry County residents, but it wasn't the sort of
commercial site where officials and dignitaries usually hold ribbon-cutting
ceremonies. This ribbon-cutting took place in the shadow of walls, watchtowers
and razor-wire, as Black Belt officials celebrated the completion of the Perry
County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center. Louisiana-based LCS Corrections,
a private prison operator that houses a number of female Alabama inmates at the
South Louisiana Correctional Center in Basil, La., will administer the facility.
State Sen. Bobby Singleton, who helped attract LCS to Perry County three years
ago as a state representative, said the city, county and surrounding area should
be proud of the facility. "We're never proud to be incarcerating someone, "
Singleton said, "however, I feel we've partnered with good corporate citizen, on
that's looking toward rehabilitation and other positive programs in their
facility."
Pine Prairie Correctional Center
Pine Prairie, Louisiana
Louisiana Correctional Services
February 22, 2006 Pickens Herald
The Pickens County Commission in a press briefing last Tuesday after their
regular meeting questioned the state’s motives in housing several hundred
prisoners in Louisiana when they could easily house them at the Pickens County
Jail at a cheaper rate. County Attorney Buddy Kirk addressed the Herald with
four of the five commissioners present (Commissioners Earnest Summerville,
William Latham, Willie Colvin and Ted Ezelle were present; Tony Junkin was
absent) about the matter after the Commission became aware that the state had
moved 140 male prisoners from the Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Ala. to a
private prison over 300 miles away in Pine Prairie, La. The Commission has
contacted the Ala-bama County Commission Association about the matter, said
Kirk, to ask for their help in approaching state officials about this curious
action. Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama state prison system, told
the Associated Press last Monday that the state plans to move 500 inmates from
the Bibb County facility to the Pine Prairie Correctional Center in central
Louisiana, a private prison operated by LCS Corrections Services Inc. The
sticking point for the Pickens County Commission is that not only is the state
having to carry the expense of transporting the prisoners to another state but
are willing to pay $29.50 a day per inmate to house them there. The state only
pays counties $1.75 per day to house state prisoners in county jails. “It
doesn’t seem right to the Commission,” said Kirk, who noted that the state will
virtually drive right by Pickens County from Bibb County to travel 300 miles to
Louisiana. Furthermore, Kirk said if a prisoner has to meet with his attorney,
it is a general rule that the state will have to pay that attorney’s expenses if
the prisoner is housed far away.
February 16, 2006 Montgomery Advertiser
How willing would you be to do business with a company with a record of
legal problems, even if it was the low bidder? Most Alabamians, we'd wager,
would have some reservations about that -- and Alabamians certainly should have
reservations about their state sending prison inmates to a private prison. For
years, the Advertiser has expressed serious concerns about the use of private
prisons. Nothing reported from the ones involved in state contracts has eased
those concerns. The Birmingham News reported this week that the Department of
Corrections has begun transferring male inmates to a private prison in Pine
Prairie, La. The prison is operated by Louisiana Corrections Service, which also
operates a facility in Basile, La., where Alabama has housed about 300 female
inmates since 2003. The reason for using these facilities is the chronic
overcrowding of Alabama's prison system, which is the subject of constant
litigation. The transfer of male inmates -- eventually about 500 of them -- is
an effort to ease the backlog in county jails of state inmates who haven't been
sent to state prisons because there is no space for them. The overcrowding
problem is at present intractable, given Alabama's sentencing structure and its
decades of failing to address the shortcomings of a system now bulging with
almost twice as many inmates as its facilities were designed to handle. LCS will
house the male inmates for $29.50 per day per inmate, but how much of a bargain
is that? There are important issues inherent in any private prison operation.
This is not someone's hobby; this is a for-profit enterprise. That's fine in
most pursuits; in fact, it is the core of the American economy. But
incarceration is a solemn obligation of the state. Depriving individuals of
liberty is serious business and the state, even though justified in doing so,
has an undeniable responsibility to those individuals. A for-profit prison has
financial considerations that a state facility does not. It has profit
expectations from its investors, and these could all too easily lead to
dangerous corner-cutting that compromises the safety of inmates and potentially
the public as well. Unlike the state, a private prison operator has no stake in
the rehabilitation of inmates vs. the mere warehousing of them. Add to those
concerns -- inherent in any private prison operation -- the legal troubles at
LSC facilities and it is easy to see why Alabamians should be uncomfortable with
this arrangement. Last week, the News reported, a former supervisor at Pine
Prairie was convicted of rights violations and witness tampering in the beating
of an inmate. Earlier, four guards at the Basile facility were indicted on
sexual abuse charges. Problems can occur at state prisons, of course, but there
the state has direct authority to act, to set employment standards and to
otherwise control the addressing of problems. That is largely lost when private
prisons are used. The private prison issue is not going to fade away. LCS is
working with officials in Perry County to open a private prison there. The
facility, located outside Uniontown, will be ready in a few months. The
Department of Corrections says there is no agreement for it to place prisoners
there, but clearly there will be great political pressure to do so. This is a
poor approach to prison issues. A far better one is broad reform of Alabama's
sentencing structure, which now sends to prison far too many people who could
serve their sentences in community-based corrections facilities with drug
treatment programs and work opportunities -- without presenting a significant
threat to the safety of the populace. Funneling non-violent offenders into
prisons is always costly and seldom productive. Absent this kind of reform of
the current system, inherently unsound practices such as the use of private
prisons will continue -- not because they are better, but because they are
cheaper.
February 16, 2006 Ledger-Enquirer
Tough on crime, or on taxpayers. Last week, Alabama's prison commissioner
went over the wall. And who could blame Commissioner Donal Campbell for
resigning? He had been given the literally impossible task of operating an
Alabama prison system with too many inmates and not nearly enough money. Not
only is he set up for failure, but he is also set up to go to jail himself for
not obeying court orders to relieve crowding. Of course, he can't build prisons
out of his own pocket, and the Alabama legislature isn't about to spend precious
tax dollars on inmates, so what could the commissioner do but throw up his hands
and walk away? "I wouldn't want that job," said Lynda Flynt, executive director
of the Alabama Sentencing Commission. She knows what she's talking about, having
worked closely with Campbell to alleviate crowding. Knowing they're going to
have a problem filling a position that includes perks such as being party to a
lawsuit, state officials are finally scrambling to do something. On Monday, the
state announced that it is going to send 500 state inmates to a private prison
in Louisiana. The private prison company there already houses more than 300
Alabama inmates. At $29.50 a day per inmate, that's going to cost Alabama
taxpayers about $24,000 a day. That's Alabama tax money that's flowing into the
Louisiana economy. If Alabama would build the prisons it needs (or consider
sentencing reforms that might ease the stress on the system) some of that cash
might stay home. Or some of it might be sent to Alabama counties that are
picking up a huge tab for housing state prisoners. As of last December, there
were about 100 state inmates being housed in Russell, Lee and Chambers County
jails. It costs counties about $30 a day to house a state prisoner, but the
state pays the counties about $1.75 a day. So housing those prisoners costs East
Alabama taxpayers more than a million dollars a year, while the state is sending
more than $8 million a year to Louisiana private prisons. If the Alabama
legislature is going to insist that this many people be in prison, then the
lawmakers have the moral responsibility to see that there is space to house the
inmates. If you're going to be tough on crime, then you're going to have to be
tough enough to pay the piper. -- Michael Owen, for the editorial board
February 13, 2006 AP
A total of 140 medium-security male prisoners were transferred Sunday night from
Alabama to a private correctional facility in Louisiana, the first of 500 to be
moved in the latest attempt to ease overcrowded cellblocks. The prisoners were
transferred from Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent to Pine Prairie
Correctional Center in Pine Prairie, La., in an effort to make room for state
inmates who are in county jails in violation of an Alabama court order. State
prisons spokesman Brian Corbett said Monday the state entered into an emergency
contract with LCS Corrections Services Inc. to send up to 500 inmates to the
central Louisiana facility. The Department of Corrections currently houses 311
female prisoners at an LCS facility in Basile, La. Prisons Commissioner Donal
Campbell announced Friday that he had resigned, effective Feb. 28. He had pushed
for increased state funding for prisons and recently said there was no money in
Gov. Bob Riley's budget proposal to pay for the use of private prisons, an
alternative he supported.
February 10, 2006 The
Advocate
A former guard at a private prison in
Evangeline Parish has been convicted on federal charges of beating an
inmate and then asking other guards to cover up the incident. The jury
deliberated about 45 minutes before returning a guilty verdict late
Wednesday against Gilbert Self, 51, after a three-day trial. Self was a
captain at the Pine Prairie Correctional Center, owned by LCS
Corrections Services. He faces up to 10 years in prison on criminal
civil rights violations and charges of witness tampering. “The
Department of Justice will not tolerate civil rights violations
committed by those sworn to uphold the law,” U.S. Attorney Donald
Washington said in a statement. “… It was Mr. Self’s responsibility to
control such violent outbreaks in the facility, not to initiate the
violence.” Self was accused of beating a Cuban national who was being
detained for immigration violations. Prosecutors said the July 2003
incident began when the detainee allegedly made crude remarks to a
female guard. She reported the remarks to Self, who went into the
detainee’s cell, punched him repeatedly, slammed his head into the floor
and kicked the man inthe ribs, according to guards who witnesses the
incident. The guards, who said they attempted to stop Self, told
investigators that he later asked them to file false reports to cover up
the beating. The guards prepared false reports on the incident, but the
next day, one of the men told Self’s supervisor what had actually
happened. The detainee, who lost consciousness during the attack,
suffered bruising and swelling to both eyes, cuts, and rib injuries,
prosecutors said. The injuries were not properly documented at the time
because Self asked a nurse to alter her medical report, according to
prosecutors, and LCS later fired the nurse for not following proper
procedures and sending the detainee to the hospital for treatment.
A federal grand jury has joined
local prosecutors and civil rights attorneys in bringing charges against
employees at private, for-profit prisons in Evangeline Parish. In the
most recent charges, Gilbert Self, 49, of Florien, a former captain at
the Pine Prairie Detention Center, has been indicted on one count of
felony criminal civil rights violation and three counts of obstruction
of justice for allegedly beating a prisoner. U.S. Attorney Donald W.
Washington said Self was arraigned Wednesday morning in Lafayette and
released on a $75,000 bond. A tentative trial date is set for July 12 on
the four charges, which each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in
prison and a $25,000 fine. Washington said sentencing in federal court
is governed by the U.S. sentencing guidelines, which do not allow for
parole. He said the federal charges stem from a government contract with
LCS Corrections Services Inc., a Lafayette-based company, which owns the
private prison near Pine Prairie and another near Basile. The current
indictment alleges that in July 2003, Self assaulted and caused bodily
harm to a Cuban national, who was being detained at the facility under
the authority of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service.
The indictment also alleges that Self obstructed the investigation by
trying to persuade three fellow guards to lie to federal law enforcement
officials. LCS owns two private prisons in Evangeline Parish. Both
are currently facing ongoing lawsuits. Last month, Evangeline Parish
District Attorney Brent Coreil opened an investigation of the South
Louisiana Correctional Center near Basile in regard to repeated charges
of sexual assaults on female prisoners. (Louisiana Gannett, May 6,
2004)
A guard at a private prison in Evangeline Parish has been booked on charges of having sex with an inmate.
Todd Daniel Arnold, 22, of Oberlin faces one count of malfeasance in office for allegedly having sex with a female inmate at Pine Prairie Correctional Center, a prison run by Lafayette-based
Louisiana Corrections Services. Arnold was booked into the Evangeline Parish Jail on Monday and released on
$7,500 bond, according to jail records. The incident comes about two years after the former warden of the Evangeline Parish Jail was convicted on two counts of malfeasance in office for extorting
sexual favors from the family members of inmates. Michael J. Savant, 48, was sentenced to six months in jail and three years probation on the charges. (Daily
Advertiser, July 7, 2003)
South
Louisiana Correctional Center
Basile, Louisiana
Louisiana Correctional Services
July 27, 2006 AP
About 320 female Alabama prisoners being housed in Louisiana are being moved
to another prison in that state but one closer to Alabama. The women inmates had
been housed at a private prison at Basile in southwest Louisiana. They are being
moved to J.B. Evans Correctional Center in Newellton, La., which is on the
Louisiana-Mississippi line about 60 miles west of Jackson. The move brings the
inmates about two and a-half hours closer to the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women
in Wetumpka, prisons commissioner Richard Allen said Thursday. It also reduces
travel time for corrections officers. The Alabama Department of Corrections has
a contract with LCS Correctional Services to house the inmates to help reduce
overcrowded conditions at Tutwiler. The J.B. Evans Correctional Center opened in
1994 and is a medium security facility with the capacity of holding 440 inmates.
Allen said it will be used exclusively for the Alabama women prisoners. More
than 600 male inmates are also housed in private facilities in Louisiana because
of overcrowded conditions in Alabama prisons.
January 25, 2006 Birmingham News
When the Alabama Department of Corrections decided to put prisoners in a private
out-of-state prison, women went first. The state opened a transition center for
people on parole, and it was for women. A close look at these experiments,
however, shows that, for the overall prison population to drop by much, the
state may need to turn to alternatives such as expanded drug courts and
community-based treatment and sentencing reform. A bill endorsed by Gov. Bob
Riley takes a step in that direction by stressing changes in Alabama's
sentencing structure. In reaction to a federal court settlement that forced the
state to cut the population at Tutwiler Prison for Women to 950, the state
Parole Board released several hundred low-level offenders and the state began
housing pockets of women in other facilities - the Louisiana private prison, the
LifeTech parole transition center and county jails. But Alabama now incarcerates
1,920 women, only a 4 percent drop in three years. And instead of steering
female drug offenders into community programs - as numerous government task
forces have recommended - the state is locking up more women for drug crimes
than ever before. "The path that Alabama has taken over the last four years of
renting more bed space for women has proven to be the wrong path," said Lisa
Kung, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit law firm
that has won settlements over conditions at prisons. In Birmingham, only 40 of
100 spaces are filled in "Second Chance" a federally funded program that allows
newly released women to live in apartments and work regular jobs while receiving
drug treatment, medical and mental health services. Not enough women are being
paroled to fill the slots. Kung agreed that LifeTech is a better option than
prison. But she wants the state to use the center for incarcerated women, not
probationers. Nearly 40 percent of the women at the private prison in Louisiana
will be eligible for parole over the next three years, according to DOC records.
Many have served terms of 15 years or more for crimes Kung said often involved
abusive partners. She's hoping parole officials will consider letting some of
these women into LifeTech, and she has been working with lawmakers on
gender-specific parole guidelines that might help cut the numbers of low-risk
women locked in private prisons. LCS Corrections houses 320 Alabama women at its
Louisiana prison, with a price tag climbing toward $10 million since the
contract began in 2003. A prison run by the same company is set to open in Perry
County and may end up housing Alabama men. Kung's problem with shipping so many
women to Louisiana is that they are housed 900 miles from their children and
families and have no opportunities to take the classes that the parole board
looks to as signs prisoners are trying to improve themselves. "The inmates
housed here have too much idle time on their hands and that defeats the purpose
of rehabilitation," inmate Sharron Kay Jones, 47, serving 15 years for
solicitation to commit murder, wrote in a letter from Louisiana "There is no
rehabilitation here at all." Inmate Paula Settle, 34, of Tuscaloosa, serving 15
years for drug trafficking, signed up for anger management, substance abuse,
parenting and trade school classes at Tutwiler. But she was immediately
transferred to Louisiana. "There are no classes, programs, meetings, jobs or
counselors here. No trades, no furthering education, no chaplain or religious
assemblies or functions," she said.
April 6, 2005 Montgomery Advertiser
From the day the Department of Corrections began talking about sending some
inmates to private, out-of-state prisons, the Advertiser expressed serious
reservations about the idea, and for several reasons. Nothing that has happened
since has changed our view of the practice. Questions
raised by female inmates sent to a privately operated prison in Louisiana have
prompted a new concern -- whether incarceration there hurts their chances for
parole. The private prison in Basile, La.,
nearly 500 miles from DOC headquarters in Montgomery, now houses about 270
Alabama inmates. Severe overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, Alabama's
only penitentiary for women, led the department to send some inmates there to
bring the Tutwiler population down to a more manageable level.
The state's short-term options were limited, so using the private prison
as a stopgap measure was understandable. But private prisons have a lot of
inherent qualities that should concern Alabamians.
They are for-profit enterprises, of course, so there are financial
pressures that could lead to potentially dangerous cutting of corners. In many
cases, they are little more than warehouses for inmates, with few opportunities
for work or training. That could be a
detrimental factor in parole considerations. As a group of inmates notes in a
call for reform, this prison that sits surrounded by Louisiana rice fields
offers no classes, no training programs, no rehabilitation groups or any of the
things that inmates can point to when they come up for parole consideration.
"Down here, the time is not constructive," said Phyllis Richey,
an inmate from Muscle Shoals. "We have nothing to do. We're basically
housed. That's it." For inmates who
are well behaved and are trying to serve their time responsibly and get out of
prison, this is clearly frustrating. Rather than having an incentive to improve
themselves in preparation for life outside prison, inmates are stuck in a prison
far away from their homes and families in Alabama, simply marking time.
That's bad enough. The prospect that their parole consideration is
affected only makes matters worse. Private
prisons are a bad concept. The sooner Alabama can get its inmates out of them,
the better.
April 1, 2005 Birmingham News
Alabama female prisoners locked in a rural Louisiana prison are demanding
changes they say could give them a fairer shot at parole and curb the state's
reliance on private, forprofit lockups. Women at the South Louisiana
Correctional Center, some of whom have been housed 500 miles from their families
for two years, wrote a Platform for Fair Reform. The two-page document includes
reasons for their concerns
and five demands they think would improve their chances for getting parole and
leading productive lives. The women have asked for: Objective parole
criteria, workrelease opportunities, an end to the parole board's backlog, an
end to the ''heinous crime'' designation that prevents some of them from working
outside the prison and a chance to face their victims as well as the parole
board. The move to the Louisiana prison, 475 miles from Montgomery, makes it
difficult or impossible for families to visit, the inmates said. Surrounded by
rice fields, the prison has no classes, programs or rehabilitation groups, the
opportunities prisoners rely on to show the parole board they have worked to
better themselves.
January 21, 2005 The Advocate
The family of an inmate who died in prison held a news conference Thursday to
release the details of his death. The family members of Gregory Lee, 35, of
Kenner, convicted in 2003 of distribution of cocaine near a church, say he died
because he didn't receive proper medical care at the South Louisiana
Correctional Center, a private prison in Basile. The family has filed suit in
federal court against LCS Corrections Services Inc. and Patrick LeBlanc of
Lafayette, Gary Copes, former Lafayette police chief and warden of the facility,
and several facility employees. The suit was filed in 2003 and is pending before
U.S. District Judge Tucker L. Melançon. Willie Nunnery, the family's attorney,
provided the media with a report from an expert his clients have hired.
"This case has taken on a new twist," Nunnery said. "It is the
intent of his family that the public know what happened to Gregory Lee."
According to his death certificate, Lee died June 22, 2003. The medical transfer
document from the SLCC indicates he left there June 17, 2003. The autopsy
report, prepared by the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office, indicates that Lee died
of complications from AIDS. However, a forensic pathologist hired by Lee's
family has examined microscope slides -- which the Orleans officials did not do
-- and determined that Lee probably died from sepsis, a severe infection. Dr.
Robert Huntington III, an associate professor in the Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, participated in the news
conference via speakerphone. Huntington said sepsis can be the result of
infected wounds that aren't treated, and it also can start with pneumonia,
bladder infections or heart infections, he said. Nunnery said he also has taken
the deposition of two inmates who were being held in Basile at the time Lee was
there. Those depositions indicate that the inmates testified Lee was being
beaten and sprayed with tear gas. Nunnery said Lee was "hogtied" and
beaten, shackled and left in chains for hours. "There can be no justice
until the courts deal with the privatization of prisons in this state,"
Nunnery said. "There should be a massive inquiry into what happened to
Gregory Lee. This individual was beaten, and the system sought to hide and cover
this up."
October 21, 2004 Montgomery
Advertiser
Although it is important to acknowledge that the filing of a lawsuit proves
nothing in and of itself, the suit filed by an Alabama inmate housed in an
out-of-state private prison raises anew some valid concerns about such
facilities. The Advertiser has long had reservations about private prisons and
nothing in Alabama's recent experience has alleviated them in the slightest.
In April of last year, Alabama began sending female inmates to a private
prison in Basile, La., to relieve overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison for Women in
Wetumpka, Alabama's only prison for females. Private
prisons are, of course, intended to be money-making ventures, and that creates
the potential for some serious problems. Even the most fervent believers in free
enterprise -- count the Advertiser among them -- surely can see that the profit
motive and the function of prisons are ripe for conflict.
When a state deprives a citizen of liberty for having violated its laws,
it also assumes the custody of that individual. That is a solemn responsibility.
When an individual is incarcerated for the protection of society, the state is
not absolved of the obligation to carry out that incarceration in a
constitutional manner.
With a private prison, the pursuit of profit invariably creates the
temptation to cut corners, to skimp on safety, personnel, medical attention,
nutrition and other facets of the operation. It's simply a bad mix of
private-sector motives and public-sector responsibilities. The merits of this
particular suit will be determined in court, but the inherent problems with
private prisons are something Alabama has to face. They are not an acceptable
solution to Alabama's prison problems in the long term, and even their
short-term use is questionable.
October 19, 2004 Daily Comet
An Alabama inmate is suing the state Department of Corrections and a private
prison company in Louisiana, claiming she was raped after being shipped out of
state due to a lack of space. The
lawsuit, filed Oct. 1 in Louisiana federal court, claims that guards at the
South Louisiana Correctional Center sexually assaulted at least two prisoners,
including raping the woman who filed the suit, and that the guards had sex with
one another and played cards and drank beer during the night shift. The
four guards named in the lawsuit have been fired. Also, an Evangeline Parish
grand jury indicted them on charges of malfeasance in office for sexual conduct
prohibited for people confined in a correctional institution. All four pleaded
not guilty, The Birmingham News reported Tuesday. The lawsuit claims that
Alabama prison Commissioner Donal Campbell failed to properly investigate LCS
before shipping Alabama women there and failed to implement proper policies and
procedures for the oversight of the contract. The inmate who filed the suit
claims she got no medical treatment after the assault.
August 15, 2004
Soon after arriving at the South Louisiana Correctional Center near Basile in
2003 inmate Gregory Lee died. Attorney Willie J. Nunnery, who is representing
Lee's mother, Mae Thompson Lee, is charging that the private, for-profit prison
abused and tortured him. Nunnery is seeking access to prisoners who
allegedly witnessed what happened to Lee and a reexamination of the forensic
evidence. When the charges where first filed, prison guards said Lee
jumped off the top bunk of his cell, hitting his head on the toilet. Nunnery, a
civil rights attorney, has a darker theory. He claims that following an
altercation after the evening meal, prison guards attempted to punish Lee by
beating him. Following the incident, Lee, badly injured from whatever cause, was
transferred to
Elayn
Hunt
Correctional
Center
, a state facility, where he died several days later. Nunnery said he is in
possession of photographs taken when Lee arrived at Elayn Hunt. "They were
very barbaric pictures," Nunnery said. "If you saw those pictures it
would make your stomach turn." The Basile facility and another LCS private
prison at Pine Prairie have repeatedly made headlines recently with both female
employees and inmates bringing charges of sexual harassment against the company.
"I don't understand why there isn't any public outcry to have that place
shut down," Nunnery said. (Daily World)
June 11, 2004
Four guards who worked at the Basile Detention Center in Evangeline Parish were
indicted Friday for allegedly having sexual contact with female inmates.
An Evangeline Parish grand jury indicted the four guards on charges of
malfeasance in office for sexual conduct prohibited for persons confined in a
correctional institution. Kenneth Stenson Sr., Horace Edwards, Frank Lenoir and
Jeffery Collins will be arraigned July 1 and will face up to 10 years in jail
and a $10,000 fine. The indictments follow four days of testimony from
investigators, prison guards and 22 inmates at the south Louisiana correctional
center. (AP)
June 7, 2004
Allegations of sexual contact between security officers and female inmates from
Alabama at a private prison in Basile are scheduled to be studied this week by a
grand jury. Two prison employees were fired after an internal
investigation into the allegations made by female inmates who were being held at
the South Louisiana Correctional Center. (AP)
April 7, 2004
A Louisiana district attorney says he will pursue criminal charges against
guards at a private prison over sexual contact with inmates from Alabama, The
Birmingham News reported. About 200 female prisoners from Alabama are
being housed at the South Louisiana Correctional Center, where they were
transferred last year to help relieve overcrowding at Tutwiler Prison for Women.
The criminal case, involving an incident late last year, is the result of an
investigation begun by the Alabama Department of Corrections. "There
is definite misconduct that did occur, and we will follow through with it,"
Evangeline Parish District Attorney Brent Coreil said Tuesday. He said he has
not decided whether to file direct charges or present a case to a grand jury.
The Basile, La., lockup is owned and operated by LCS Corrections, based in
Lafayette, La. Alabama pays the company about $23 per inmate per day to house
the women. "ADOC's investigation produced a confession from an
employee at South Louisiana Correctional Center, along with subsequent
termination of that employee. We then turned our investigative report over to
the local district attorney for prosecution," Alabama prisons spokesman
Brian Corbett said. (AP)
February 13, 2004
Investigators are looking into allegations of illegal sexual contact between a
female prisoner and a guard at the Louisiana private prison housing prisoners
from Alabama. This is the second such investigation involving an Alabama inmate
and an employee or employees of Southeastern Louisiana Correctional Center, said
Richard Harbison, general manager of LCS Corrections Services. The Lafayette,
La., company runs the prison housing about 275 Alabama women. "We do have
the district attorney involved in it," Harbison said Thursday. "Which
means we're taking it very seriously." Harbison said the
current investigation stems from an alleged incident that occurred about two
months ago, but was reported only recently. He said it was not considered an
assault. Under Louisiana and Alabama law, sex between prisoners and guards is
illegal. The laws are aimed at keeping guards from using their power to coerce
or abuse prisoners. The Alabama Department of Corrections pays LCS about
$24 per prisoner to per day. DOC signed the contract with the for-profit company
last April because of pressure to relieve crowding at Tutwiler Prison for
Women. Tutwiler Warden Gladys Deese and a DOC investigator visited the
Basile, La., prison this week to look into the recent claim, Harbison
said. Deese's visit was already scheduled and part of her duties as
warden, said Steve Hayes, an Alabama prison spokesman. Hayes confirmed
that Alabama authorities are investigating reports of an inappropriate incident
at the Louisiana prison. LCS has placed three guards on leave during the
investigation. Harbison said not all of them are suspects, that some are
suspected of observing improper activity and not reporting it. Last year,
officials at the Louisiana prison investigated another alleged sexual incident
between an Alabama inmate and a prison employee or employees. "The first
one we were unable to prove or disprove," Harbison said. LCS had
arranged for the inmate who made the first allegation to take a polygraph test.
Before the test could be administered, the Alabama DOC transferred to the woman
back to Tutwiler, one of a group of 30 inmates who returned last November,
Harbison said. (Advocate)
Tutwiler
Prison for Women
Wetumpka, Mississippi
Prison Health Services
December 12, 2005 Birmingham News
It's been a year since Tutwiler Prison's health care became subject to quarterly
visits from a court monitor, Illinois Dr. Michael Puisis. His reports have
blamed prison doctors for several deaths and generally have been scathing. But
the latest is different. "Much improvement has been recognized,"
Puisis begins. He commends the Alabama Department of Corrections for
refurbishing clinics, examining rooms and the pharmacy. However, medical care
remains sketchy for many prisoners, with missed medications, delayed treatment
or no treatment at all. "There is a system in place to administer
medications, but it remains broken," Puisis wrote. Puisis, an expert in
correctional health care, was appointed in 2004 to monitor the medical agreement
from a class action lawsuit settled on behalf of Tutwiler inmates. The DOC
switched medical providers shortly before the agreement was signed, replacing
Birmingham-based Naphcare with PHS. The lawsuit, filed in 2002 by the
Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, also produced a settlement that
governs overall conditions at the prison. In the June 2004 federal court
settlement, the Alabama Department of Corrections agreed to dozens of
improvements in medication, dental care and mental health care for almost 1,000
women housed at the state's only prison for women. Sweeping changes called for
everything from better sanitation to cut down on insects to quicker responses to
inmates' complaints of painful medical problems left untreated for months. A
year later, Puisis is lukewarm in his evaluation. He says the prison is in
"partial compliance," but repeats concerns he's voiced all year. Among
them, women housed in the segregation unit filed repeated sick call requests
that were ignored. One woman, who filed four complaints about abdominal pain
since February, was found to have a hemorrhaging cyst in March. The potentially
malignant cyst has not been removed, and she has not been seen since August.
"This is an excessive wait to evaluate this potentially life-threatening
condition," Puisis wrote. Earlier this year, the Alabama DOC withheld $1.2
million in payments to PHS as a result of understaffing at some of the prisons.
A March report from Puisis cited poor, incomplete or substandard medical care as
contributors to three women's deaths at Tutwiler.
May 7, 2005 AP
The third death of an inmate in two months at Tutwiler Prison for Women has
raised more questions about the quality of care provided for prisoners.
Officials said Mattie Bouie, 42, died last week at Baptist Hospital South in
Montgomery - six months after a federal court monitor cited her case as an
example of "no effective physician monitoring of patients" at the
Wetumpka prison. Bouie's death was the sixth at the women's prison since
Tennessee-based Prison Health Services took over the medical contract. Court
monitor Dr. Michael Puisis has suggested that negligent care was responsible for
at least two deaths. He has not released mortality reports on the other cases.
Puisis was appointed by a federal court last year after the state settled a
lawsuit over poor conditions and medical care at the prison. The Department of
Corrections agreed to improvements and increased staff at the facility, and
Puisis is responsible for monitoring the agency's progress toward achieving
those goals.
May 6, 2005 Birmingham News
Prison Health Services has been under the gun, and rightly so, for the way
it's provided medical care to Alabama inmates. The Tennessee-based company was
hired to improve health care in Alabama prisons, which had been sued over
services provided by a previous contractor. But the care in prisons remains
unacceptable. A recurring theme is a shortage of doctors, nurses and other staff
to tend to the inmates, with predictable consequences. At best, the care has
been inadequate. At worst, it may have been downright deadly. The state of
Alabama, which has the ultimate responsibility (and liability) for what happens
to prisoners in its custody, has every reason to demand better from Prison
Health Services. And withholding part of the company's payment is an appropriate
place to start. The state is reducing the company's $143 million contract by
$1.2 million for staffing shortages, and may cut more if staffing levels aren't
increased. Why not? The state is paying Prison Health Services to provide a
certain number of professionals and support staff to administer inmates' health
care. If the company is not meeting the requirements of the contract, it should
not expect to be paid as if it were. Besides, what's really at stake here is
bigger than money. Too many inmates are not receiving proper care for chronic
conditions, and some are dying unnecessarily as a result, according to doctors
who monitor prison health care for the courts. At the Tutwiler women's prison,
the monitor found that three inmates who died last year received poor or
incomplete care, and two of them may have died as a result. At Limestone
Correctional Facility, which houses HIV-positive inmates, the monitor found
prisoners weren't getting crucial medication and that a required HIV specialist
was not on staff. It's true that turnover has been a big problem. Prison Health
Services has had problems retaining doctors and other health care workers; some
have left complaining they didn't have the resources to do their jobs. But the
bottom line is that the company agreed to provide a certain level of services,
and it has been failing to do so. At the very least, the state should adjust the
payments to Prison Health Services accordingly. So the company is losing
dollars. Inmates are losing their lives.
May 5, 2005 Birmingham News
Alabama's prison medical provider is losing $1.2 million from the state
because it has not provided enough doctors and nurses to state prisons. Prison
Health Services has not fulfilled minimal contract requirements that call for a
certain number of doctors, nurses, administrators and support staff. The company
is not being fined, Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said, but
DOC will not have to pay $1.2 million of its contract. The department hired PHS
in November 2003. The company's three-year, $143 million contract could see more
reductions if the medical staff does not increase. Tennessee-based Prison Health
Services also has come under fire in recent months by physicians who are
monitoring two prisons under federal court settlements. A lawsuit alleging
inadequate medical care is pending at a third prison, the Hamilton Aged and
Infirm facility, where the oldest, sickest men are housed. Dr. Michael Puisis,
court monitor at Tutwiler Prison for Women, said in a March report that prison
medical staff provided poor or incomplete care to three inmates who died last
year. He suggested that negligence might have led to two of those deaths. The
third, a suicide, was likely the result of inadequate care by mental health
workers, who are employed by a different company. Two deaths since then are
still under investigation. Still, attorneys for the
Limestone inmates have asked the federal courts to hold the state in contempt
for failing to abide by the conditions of the settlement. Last year, the state
agreed to dozens of improvements, centering on added medical staff and more
humane housing conditions. Doctors keep leaving, some after claiming PHS did not
allow them the flexibility and resources to practice medicine as they want to
do. "There are just as many complaints raised after the settlement as
before," said Gretchen Rohr, an attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern
Center for Human Rights, who represents Alabama prisons in both cases.
April 26, 2005 Mobile Register
Poor, incomplete, substandard -- and perhaps error-ridden -- medical care led to
the deaths of at least three women incarcerated at Tutwiler Prison for Women
last year, emphasizing the need for improved health care in Alabama's prisons.
It also suggests the physician who treated the women should be suspended while
officials determine if he was at fault; and if he was, he should be fired.
Moreover, the poor health care the women apparently received indicates the state
should consider finding a different health services company. The staggering
conclusions by a physician who monitors the prison's medical system for a
federal court settlement were revealed by the Birmingham News last week, and
implicate Dr. Samuel Englehardt, a retired obstetrician and primary care doctor
at Tutwiler at the time of the three deaths. Two other deaths have occurred this
year, and officials should speedily investigate those, too. Outrageously, Dr.
Englehardt, who provided the health care for one of the three prisoners who died
last year, also performed her death review and concluded that there were no
problems with the health care she had received. A policy of independent reviews
would prevent such conflicts of interest. Dr. Michael Puisis of Illinois, an
expert in correctional health care, studied the three women's deaths for a
federal court. He discovered one patient suffered a brain hemorrhage and died a
few months after Dr. Englehardt canceled tests recommended by an outside
cardiologist. Another woman's extremely high cholesterol wasn't treated and
"unquestionably contributed to her death." A third -- an obviously
distraught woman who was denied adequate psychiatric care -- committed suicide.
Dr. Puisis also found that other Tutwiler inmates received substandard care at
the prison, including a lack of follow-up on treatments and mistakes in
prescribing drugs. The inmates deserved better health care. When the state
confines a person in a prison, preventing her from taking care of herself, then
the state assumes the responsibility for the inmate's medical care. That's part
of the cost of incarcerating people, and the moral duty it entails cannot be
avoided. State officials must hold both the Department of Corrections and its
private contractor, Prison Health Services of Tennessee, accountable for these
and other lapses; and the public must hold the Legislature accountable for
failing to provide funding for an adequate corrections system. The poor health
care alone has subjected the state to three lawsuits so far from prisoners at
Tutwiler, Limestone and Donaldson prisons. Moreover, it has exposed the state to
possible suits by families of deceased prisoners. Department of Corrections
managers apparently did not monitor the care provided by PHS or, if they did,
they ignored or missed problems that should have been evident. The state, its
taxpayers and its prisoners deserve better.
April 24, 2005 Birmingham News
Three women who died at Tutwiler prison last year received bad medical care
- perhaps even bad enough in two of the cases to be blamed in the deaths. That's
the conclusion of Dr. Michael Puisis of Illinois, an expert in correctional
health care who was hired by a federal court to monitor Tutwiler's health care
services for inmates. Specifically, Puisis found: The primary prison doctor at
the time had "grossly mismanaged" the underlying medical problems of
an inmate who suffered from lupus and died of a brain hemorrhage in March 2004.
Her death came a few months after the doctor, for no clinical reason, canceled
tests that had been recommended by an outside cardiologist. Another inmate
received substandard care for three chronic conditions, including high
cholesterol that went untreated and "unquestionably contributed to her
death." After she died in August, the doctor responsible for her
"substandard care" performed the death review and noted no problems
with her treatment. An inmate hanged herself after being on suicide watch for
five days in January 2004. The day before she died, she was crying, saying
"Daddy, don't hurt me anymore," and banging her head against the wall.
Yet she was not evaluated by a mental health professional except for a phone
call to a psychiatrist who prescribed medicine. These kinds of stories hardly
inspire confidence in the Department of Corrections or its medical contractor,
Prison Health Services. And unfortunately, the cases aren't just extreme
examples. In 19 of 22 cases Puisis reviewed at Tutwiler, he found problems with
followup, drug errors and substandard care. Women with HIV, staph infections,
diabetes and other conditions were consistently denied treatment, he said. His
findings are simply alarming - especially if, as the Department of Corrections
and Prison Health Services contend, inmate health care services are better now
than they used to be. But scariest of all is that the department and PHS are now
trying to keep Puisis' reports away from public view. The reports have typically
been filed with the court and made public by the Southern Center for Human
Rights, the Atlanta-based law firm representing prisoners in a lawsuit over
health care. Now, the state and its medical contractor want to keep the reports
confidential. That's absurd. The need for scrutiny is obvious: Inmates aren't
getting proper health care, and some may be dying as a result. The problems need
to be brought to light so they can be fixed. But keeping the monitor reports
secret would be a bad idea even if they were glowing tributes to the health care
services provided to inmates at Tutwiler. Alabama taxpayers are footing the bill
for the prison system and for PHS' $143 million contract, and they have every
right to know whether their money is being well-spent. If
Gov. Bob Riley is serious about accountability, he shouldn't stand for his
prison commissioner working to keep such information out of the hands of
citizens.
April 21, 2005 Tuscaloosa News
Negligence and medical errors may have led to two of three inmate deaths
last year at Tutwiler Prison for Women, according to a report by a physician and
court monitor of the prison's medical system. Dr. Michael Puisis of Illinois, an
expert in correctional health care, based his report on visits to the Wetumpka
prison March 7-10. He reviewed records, interviewed staff and toured parts of
the Wetumpka prison. His report, obtained by The Birmingham News and disclosed
Thursday, was required by a 2004 federal court settlement of a lawsuit over
crowded conditions and medical care at Alabama's only prison for women. With
current patients, Puisis reported that private contractor Prison Health Services
lacked follow-up, made mistakes in prescribing drugs and gave substandard care
to 19 of 22 prisoners whose charts he reviewed. Women with HIV, staph
infections, diabetes and other conditions were consistently denied treatment, he
wrote.
Two more women have died at Tutwiler this year, and their deaths are
under investigation. Puisis has yet to review those cases. Dr. Samuel Englehardt,
a retired obstetrician and the primary doctor at Tutwiler at the time of the
review, worked there before PHS took over and was retained by the company.
"Based on chart reviews, Dr. Englehardt should not be providing general
internal medical care to the patients," the report states. Among the
mistakes the report cited in the three deaths: -"This patient's underlying
medical conditions were grossly mismanaged," Puisis wrote about one woman,
a lupus patient who suffered a brain hemorrhage and died in March 2004, a few
months after Englehardt canceled tests recommended by an outside cardiologist.
"There is no clinical basis for this decision," Puisis wrote.
-"Care (of three chronic conditions) was substandard and may have
contributed to her death," Puisis wrote about a prisoner who died in
August. Her hyperlipidemia, a form of high cholesterol, was untreated and
"unquestionably contributed to her death," he wrote. This woman needed
to go to a hospital, he wrote, but instead was kept in the prison infirmary and
was not seen regularly by a doctor. -The third inmate hanged herself while on
suicide watch. She was on suicide watch for five days, but was not evaluated by
a mental health professional except for a phone call to a psychiatrist who
prescribed medication. On Jan. 24, 2004, the woman was crying, saying,
"Daddy, don't hurt me anymore," and was banging her head against a
wall, a nurse reported. The next day she hanged herself. "It appears that
the record is either incomplete or she was not seen for the duration of her
suicide watch until she died," Puisis wrote. "This type of death
review is inadequate and leaves many unanswered questions." In the report,
Puisis discusses the publicity issue. While fear of liability keeps doctors from
reporting errors and is counterproductive to improving care, "on the other
hand some errors are due to negligence and gross incompetence," Puisis
wrote.
University
of South Alabama
ARAMARK
February 4, 2004
A number of concerns have been fielded regarding the price of
school-sponsored catering services on campus and administrators are working to
find acceptable mediums to settle the contention. The University of South
Alabama's dining service provider, ARAMARK, has come under fire from two
separate student organizations for charging inflated fees for simple catering
events. Inquiries began after USA's Student Government Association
received a bill for an ice cream social that it hosted last semester. The SGA
followed contractual bylaws requiring on-campus, school-sponsored catering to be
managed by ARAMARK. While SGA President Clay Hammac insisted the event was a
success, he lamented the cost. "We wanted students randomly passing
by to just grab a bowl of ice cream and sit around with other students and
socialize," Hammac said. "We ended up with a great turnout. We must
have had about 100 traditional and non-traditional students and I think some
friendships were made and some ice was broken. But to put on that social, we had
six gallons of ice cream, some sprinkles and two ARAMARK attendants on hand. The
whole thing lasted about an hour and it ended up costing us a little over
$600." A similar complaint arose Jan. 21, when the African-American
Student Association and the Office of Minority Student Affairs co-sponsored a
speech by celebrated Tuskegee Airman Maj. Carrol S. Woods, as part of the annual
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. The SGA, at the request of AASA, agreed
to pay for the cost of catering. Hammac contacted MSA Office Manager Celia
Rochelle and permitted her to place the order and have the bill sent to the SGA.
"The bill was $210. I went to see the Tuskegee Airman speak and when I got
there, man, I was just blown away," Hammac said. "For $210, we had
three trays of cookies and two pitchers of punch." After that
episode, Hammac immediately relayed his dissatisfaction to Dr. Dale Adams, USA's
vice president for student affairs, who said he would address the issue on an
administrative level. Sally Cobb, USA's manager of campus involvement, was
equally surprised by a bill she received from ARAMARK for Papa John's Pizza.
Cobb placed the pizza order last year for a meeting of the Freshman Leadership
Council. ARAMARK's role was to arrange for a delivery, which Cobb was able to
receive directly. While Cobb couldn't recall an exact dollar figure, she said
the arrangement cost "almost twice as much as if I had placed the order
myself." (USA Vanguard)
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