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Congress
August 15, 2008 AP
Private prison company Corrections Corp. of America spent $240,000 lobbying the
federal government on legislation dealing with prison spending and policy,
according to a recent disclosure form. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company
lobbied on legislation dealing with private prisons and public safety, as well
as on issues involving immigration, labor and more. Besides Congress,
Corrections lobbied the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department,
Office of Management and Budget, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, according to
a report filed July 18 with the House clerk's office.
August 14, 2008 AP
Had this been like most nominations for federal judgeships, the chief lawyer
with Corrections Corporation of America might have been packing up his office
and heading for the courthouse by now. But a determined opponent — a former
prisoner at a Corrections Corporation of America facility in Clifton, Tenn. —
has worked tirelessly to see that would not happen. And he may have succeeded.
More than a year after President Bush nominated Gustavus A. Puryear IV to become
a U.S. district judge in Nashville, the 40-year-old's appointment appears to be
in serious trouble, thanks in no small part to Alex Friedmann, a convicted armed
robber turned inmate advocate. Friedmann, 39, contends Puryear is unqualified
because he lacks experience in federal courts — he's been involved in only two
federal trials — and might have a potential conflict of interest in hearing
cases that involve CCA. On his Web site, http://www.againstpuryear.org,
Friedmann also has detailed Puryear's ties to powerful Republicans like Dick
Cheney, whom he helped prep for a 2000 debate, and portrayed Puryear as someone
who got the nomination because of his connections rather than his
qualifications. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Puryear's
nomination in February but has yet to vote on whether to send his name to the
full Senate. Erica Chabot, the press secretary for committee Chairman Patrick
Leahy, said Puryear is one of only three people who have been nominated for
district judgeships since January 2007 and have had hearings before the
committee but have not had their nominations voted on. Leahy, D-Vt., has said
the panel will not consider any more nominees this session without the consent
of leaders from both parties. "I understand they have put Puryear in the
'controversial' category," said Brian Fitzpatrick, who once worked for
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas defending Bush's Supreme Court nominees and
is now an assistant law professor at Vanderbilt University. "It's very rare for
a district court nominee to become controversial. Usually they just fly
through." The Senate typically defers heavily to the senators from the nominee's
home state, and Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee
solidly support Puryear. But the opposition has been unusually committed.
Multiple organizations, including the left-leaning Alliance for Justice and the
National Lawyer's Guild, have challenged Puryear's nomination, all of them using
research that originated with Friedmann, occasionally quoting it verbatim.
Friedmann says he learned of the nomination because he keeps track of
Nashville-based CCA, which manages 66 facilities around the country. He looked
through dockets and court cases, contacted former co-workers and made Freedom of
Information Act requests. To get the word out, he relied on the nonprofit
Private Corrections Institute, for which he serves as vice president, and a
group he formed called Tennesseans Against Puryear. Puryear did not return calls
from The Associated Press for this story. White House spokesman Blair Jones said
the White House suggests that nominees not speak to the media, prior to
confirmation, out of respect for the deliberative process of the Senate. "Groups
can attack a nominee, but you'll never see (the nominee) respond to anything
except at hearings," said Puryear's friend Ed Haden, an attorney in Birmingham,
Ala. Haden said the obstacles to Puryear's nomination are political, and don't
mean he is not qualified for the job. "As far as his qualifications go, he was
at the top of his class in law school, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals,
he has legislative experience in the U.S. Senate, he manages litigation for a
big Fortune 500 company, and the ABA (American Bar Association) rated him as
qualified," Haden said. "Gus realizes this is a lame duck year in politics," he
added. "It's true for all nominees — whether you're in the deal or not is beyond
your control." Puryear's nomination remains active until Congress adjourns, and
he could still be confirmed. The most likely scenario for that would be a deal
struck between senators. "At the end of the session, it's, 'Who wants a bridge
in Vermont?'" said Haden, who has worked with two U.S. senators on judicial
nominations. Meanwhile, Friedmann is continuing his opposition campaign in the
hopes of making a last-minute deal less likely. "I'm glad the Judiciary
Committee is taking a closer look at Mr. Puryear as a candidate because the
issues we raised are legitimate issues," he said. "But," he added, "I'm
definitely not claiming victory."
July 21, 2008 First Amendment Center
A bill before Congress would extend the Freedom of Information Act to
require private prisons contracted by the federal government to release records
under the same standards as federal prisons. The Private Prison Information Act
of 2007 (H.R. 1889), introduced by Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., would require private
prisons and other correctional facilities under contract with federal agencies
to house federal prisoners to make their records accessible under the same FOIA
requirements that govern federal prisons. An identical bill was introduced in
the Senate (S. 2010) by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Prison privatization has
increased rapidly in the face of growing concerns over overcrowding, safety and
poor health care in public institutions. Desire to control costs has also led to
an increase in privatization. However, privately owned and operated facilities
are not subject to the same FOIA scrutiny as public agencies. Although the press
and public can retrieve information about privately run prisons from the
Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and other government agencies, private prisons remain largely
outside the scope of FOI laws. Of the almost 1.6 million prisoners in the United
States in June 2007, 7.4% of them were held in privately operated correctional
facilities, according to the June 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin. At
last count, in 2000, the BJS reported 264 private facilities under state and
federal contracts used to house prisoners. And there were 5.4% more prisoners in
private facilities in June 2007 than in June 2006, according to BJS. Private
detention centers are also used to house immigrant detainees. Two lawsuits filed
in the last two months aim to force private prisons to release records,
including one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union investigating the
deaths of immigrant detainees in federal custody. In May 2008, The Washington
Post ran a four-day series investigating medical conditions in immigrant
prisons. "Careless Detention" explored the deaths of 83 prisoners and detainees
in custody between March 2003 and May 2008. "Our correctional system is broken.
It is overcrowded and unsafe," said Mike Flynn, director of government affairs
for the Reason Foundation. "Contracting with private prisons gives us an ability
to better manage outcomes. I think contracts should require certain benchmarks,
like treatment programs, continuing education and job training." The Reason
Foundation is a nonprofit think tank that promotes "libertarian principles,
including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law," according to
its Web site. The largest private corrections-management service in the U.S. is
Corrections Corporation of America, which is headquartered in Nashville. CCA
posted $35 million in profits during the first quarter of 2008, according to a
company press release. CCA and other private corrections companies have seen
rapid growth from contracts with states and the federal government. The Los
Angeles Times reported in August 2007 that California state officials had signed
a contract with CCA to hold about 4,000 prisoners for $63 per prisoner, per day.
It would cost the state an average of $123 per prisoner, per day in a state
prison. As private corrections companies grow, so do questions about their
methods, success and profitability. The recent lawsuits seek answers to some of
those questions. The ACLU filed an FOI lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia after DHS failed to turn over documents related to the deaths of
immigrants held in public and private detention centers. The lawsuit also named
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of the Inspector General for
DHS. "DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody deaths
secret," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU National Prison Project,
in a press release. "It is imperative that ICE be held publicly accountable."
Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that covers prison issues, filed a lawsuit
against CCA in a Tennessee court on May 19 after CCA did not respond to a
public-records request. The lawsuit, Friedmann v. CCA, argues that CCA performs
a public function, and its records should be public. In 2002, the Tennessee
Supreme Court ruled that a private company performing a public function must
make its records available to the public under the Tennessee Public Records Act.
In Memphis Publishing Company v. Cherokee Children & Family Services, the court
ruled that a nonprofit social service agency under state contract had to turn
its records over to the Memphis Commercial Appeal because it was the "functional
equivalent" of a government agency. "Public agencies cannot contract away the
public's ability to review records that otherwise would be publicly accessibly
under the state's open records law," said Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal
News, in a press release. "The public's right to know is not delegable to
private corporations." One FOI expert applauded the congressional bills that
would make private-prison companies accountable to the federal FOIA. "I think
that is a long-overdue fix," Charles Davis, executive director of the National
Freedom of Information coalition, said of the Private Prison Information Act of
2007. "This is a problem on the state level. This would fix it at the federal
level in a way that would bring a whole lot of otherwise private operations into
public scrutiny. We've seen lots of anecdotal evidence over the past decade for
the need for public oversight and scrutiny." Some aspects of private-prison
contracts are already accessible under FOIA, however. Flynn of the Reason
Foundation argued that those provisions provide enough information. "The federal
agencies that manage the contract with the private company are subject to the
FOIA process. The agencies engage in regular and ongoing oversight of the
contract, usually having [their] own employees in the facility full-time. All
reports and studies from these monitors are subject to the FOIA process. Terms
of the contract with the private company are subject to FOIA. Their progress in
meeting any benchmarks detailed in the contract are subject to FOIA," said
Flynn. "If there is relevant information that isn't available, it can be [added
to] terms of the contract and then be subject to FOIA. There is no limit to what
can be required to be disclosed to the agency, which would then be subject to
FOIA." Davis agreed that FOIA's coverage of contracts between the government and
private-prison companies was important, but said it didn't go far enough. "The
contract piece is important and FOIA does do a good job with that," he said.
"The contract data is just a sliver of the overall picture of what people should
rightly have access to … . The vast majority of the information isn't covered."
Davis mentioned "inspection reports, incident reports involving inmate violence,
and just about any narrative report documenting inmate treatment." If the ACLU's
or Prison Legal News' lawsuit succeeds in extracting records from private-prison
corporations or if Congress passes the Private Prison Information Act, an
increase in information from these prisons could bring light to a host of new
issues. Some of these may well involve the First Amendment. U.S. courts
frequently address issues related to access to publications, religious material,
special diets and other claims of First Amendment violations from prisoners. "I
think you could get better protections," said Flynn when asked about the First
Amendment rights of prisoners in private facilities, "because they can be
detailed in a contract with the private company. These protections can be
mandated into the contract rather than litigated later." "The best part about
having this information is that we would be able to act on it. Private companies
can be fired. Public facilities cannot," Flynn said. Said Davis, "When you start
getting the human narrative of incident reports, what's going on in these
prisons on a day to day basis, they could be rife with corruption or running
like a Swiss cruise ship."
July 15, 2008 The Daily Cougar
As Sen. Barack Obama wages his presidential campaign across the United
States with political gusto, he's attracted names such as Vice President Al Gore
and Sen. John Edwards. University of Houston Associate Professor of Law Tony
Chase has also temporarily shifted his duties as a professor to become a member
of the National Finance Committee of Obama's campaign. "I've known (Obama) for
quite some time, and I was one of the people he asked whether if he should run,"
Chase said. "Because of that, this is very personal, and I genuinely believe he
is best for this country." Aside from teaching, Chase is chairman and CEO of
ChaseCom L.P. and Chase Radio Partners. He is also chairman and co-founder,
together with SBC Communications Inc., of The Telecom Opportunity Institute, an
organization that provides technical literacy training at no cost to at-risk
communities. He serves as a director of Leap Wireless International Inc. and
Cornell Companies Inc., and is chairman of the Houston Zoo Development Board. He
is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a director of the
United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast and Houston Parks. Chase began teaching
communications law and contracts at the UH Law Center in 1990 and received the
Edith Baker Faculty Award in 1994. On July 8, he stepped down as the director of
the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank to dedicate more time to the campaign. "I can't
pick out a certain experience, but teaching graduate law and undergraduate
classes has been particularly helpful in preparing me, because students are the
future and full of ideas that in turn help me think about today's issues," Chase
said. "My experience at the University helps me by being part of the excitement
and interest among young and potential voters." As for his motives, he believes
that the nation, in its current state, needs Obama as president. "I've known
Barack and Michelle for a long time, and based on that, I believe he is a
transcendent political figure," Chase said. "I know him well and his integrity
and how he responds to pressure, but also how he will be an excellent leader."
As the member of the National Finance Committee for the campaign, he helps make
decisions on how the campaign will utilize its funds and how the fundraising
will be run. He also performs special projects such as arranging meetings with
constituents and senior advisors. "The experience I gain from the campaign will
only help the way I try to bring practical experience to the classroom, and this
is actually quite relevant to what I teach at the University," Chase said. Chase
will return to teach in the fall and resume his usual duties for his
organizations. "I will still do what I can to accommodate my teaching
responsibilities and campaign duties and continue to voice my support for Barack
Obama," Chase said.
June 13, 2008 Tennessean
A year ago today, Gustavus "Gus" Puryear IV was nominated for a federal
judgeship in Nashville and appeared headed to an easy confirmation. Now
Puryear's confirmation seems unlikely. In addition to questions raised about his
qualifications and actions as general counsel for Corrections Corporation of
America, Puryear's fate is now caught in intense election-year battles between
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate over lifetime judicial appointments.
Senate Democrats are looking to approve as few of Republican President Bush's
appointments as they can before his term expires, hoping Democratic Sen. Barack
Obama of Illinois wins the presidency. Republicans did the same during the final
months of the Democratic Clinton administration. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a
longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets nominees, said at
a committee hearing Thursday that this practice is simply the "fact of the
matter." "It is legitimate," Biden said. "These are lifetime appointments."
Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said at the end of the hearing,
which included approval of three judicial nominees, that no more judges would be
confirmed unless there is agreement among him and ranking committee Republican
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and the Democratic and Republican leaders of the
Senate. Even Tennessee's two Republican senators, who signed off on Puryear's
nomination, acknowledge his confirmation is in trouble. "Gus Puryear is a
qualified nominee who deserves an up-or-down vote in the Senate, and we're
continuing to pursue every option to that end," Sen. Bob Corker said in a
written statement. "The current atmosphere in the Senate makes his confirmation
more difficult — not impossible, just increasingly more difficult as we approach
the fall elections." Sen. Lamar Alexander said he was still hopeful. "But the
Democrats have slowed confirmation of President Bush's nominees to a ridiculous
extent," Alexander said in a recent interview. CCA spokesman Steve Owen,
responding to a request for Puryear to comment, said the company has "no way of
knowing what the outcome of the confirmation process will be. We continue to
believe that Mr. Puryear would make an excellent federal judge. He has served
the company admirably and with great integrity as general counsel." The
Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Puryear's nomination in February but has
not scheduled a vote on whether to send his name to the full Senate for a vote.
Reasons cited by opponents as to why Puryear should not be confirmed include: a
lack of trial and judicial experience, his role as chief lawyer for the
country's largest private prison company, and the company's handling of the 2004
death of Estelle Richardson while she was in the Metro Detention Facility in
Nashville. Among those opposing Puryear's confirmation are: The Alliance for
Justice, an umbrella group of national civil rights and other organizations,
Private Corrections Institute Inc., which opposes prison privatization and the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
May 7, 2008 Nashville Post
A series of articles by the New York Times have Washington, D.C. insiders
saying that Gus Puryear should keep his day job. Puryear, executive vice
president and general counsel for Nashville based Corrections Corporation of
America, was nominated by President George W. Bush last year to serve on the
U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee. Since the nomination, Puryear has been
attacked here and in Washington for everything from his handling of CCA legal
matters, his membership in the Belle Meade Country Club, to his lack of
experience outside of corporate law. While the nomination of Puryear has not
moved due to objections of U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy and Diane Feinstein, he
still has had hope of being confirmed to the bench. Now, a number of
NashvillePost.com sources are saying that hope is even in more jeopardy.
Democratic insiders in Washington contacted by NashvillePost.com say that what
hope Puryear had was effectively killed by a series of articles published this
week by the New York Times. Republican insiders acknowledge that the articles
have made Puryear's bid "more complicated" and there is no momentum to push him
forward at this time. While the articles don't mention Puryear by name, CCA is
sharply criticized for their handling of the death of Boubacar Bah and the
labeling of his inmate file as "proprietary information - not for distribution."
Bah was 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. While
incarcerated, Bah had fallen and hit his head and became incoherent. According
to the NYT, "documents detail how he was treated by guards and government
employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and
vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite
repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the
mouth." He was eventually transported to a hospital, but his family was not
notified of his whereabouts for five days. He died four months later. The Times
also ran an editorial on this matter yesterday.
April 25, 2008 Nashville Scene
State Rep. Mike Turner has fired off a missive to Tennessee Department of
Correction Commissioner George Little about the spate of questionable practices
and incidents that have landed Corrections Corporation of America in the news.
CCA, as you'll recall, contracts with Tennessee (along with many other state and
federal authorities) to run their prisons and jails. In his April 16 letter,
which Pith obtained this morning, Turner mentions the Time magazine story that
alleges CCA counsel Gus Puryear allegedly whitewashed incident reports on
escapes and unnatural deaths, so as not to alarm the company's clients. He also
cites The Tennessean piece on an inmate at a Metro-controlled, CCA-run
correctional facility who went nine months without a shower, as well as the
recent Nashville Scene article that reported how guards at that same facility
falsely claimed a jail-cell surveillance camera wasn't working—just one day
after an inmate was found in her cell with a broken skull, according to the
detective who wanted to review the footage. In other words, it's just another
day in the life of CCA and Gus Puryear—who, we should add, is called out in the
upcoming issue of the National Law Journal for being one of Bush's most
controversial judicial appointees.
March 26, 2008 Tennessean
Add women’s rights groups to the list opposing the federal judicial
nomination of Gus Puryear IV, the embattled general counsel for the Corrections
Corporation of America. Puryear’s membership to Nashville’s Belle Meade County
Club is under fire by the women’s rights organization who say women are unable
to vote or hold office at the private golf club. National Organization of Women,
the National Council for Women’s Organizations and the Women’s Equal rights
Legal Defense and Education Fund have sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. Puryear’s nomination ignited a debate whether the general counsel of
CCA, the for-profit prison giant, is suited for the bench in light of
allegations that he encouraged misleading incident reports. Private Corrections
Institute, an advocacy group that opposes prison privatization, has been an
outspoken critic of Puryear's nomination. The Alliance for Justice and the
National Lawyers Guild are among the opposition. There’s also a website,
www.againstpuryear.org, is part of the opposition campaign. The hearings were
held last month and the committee has not voted on his nomination. President
Bush nominated Puryear last June to serve as a federal judge for the Middle
District of Tennessee.
March 21, 2008 Nashville Scene
Yesterday I talked with Rob McGuire, the local prosecutor who brought
charges against four CCA guards in the death of inmate Estelle Richardson, who
in 2004 was found in her solitary cell with a broken skull and four cracked
ribs. McGuire ultimately dropped the case, after doctors for both CCA and
Richardson's family determined that her head injuries might have been sustained
before she was placed in solitary confinement. Now, though, the Richardson case
has taken center stage in the nomination hearings of Gus Puryear, the CCA
general counsel who was nominated by President George W. Bush to a federal
judgeship in Tennessee's Middle District. The Senate Judiciary Committee has
grilled Puryear about his statements about the case—he falsely claimed the
guards were “exonerated”—and how his company handled the investigation. On that
count, McGuire has a rather interesting story to share. And now we're going to
have to jump. McGuire says that when a Metro homicide detective began to
investigate Richardson's death, he asked to see videotape of the
extractions—i.e., those times when an inmate is ushered in and out of her cell.
Instead, guards told him the camera had mysteriously malfunctioned. Wouldn't you
know it, the detective was told, there's no footage available—which is not much
different than when the suspect tells Lennie Briscoe he doesn't remember what he
was doing the night of the murder. At that point, the detective examined the
camera and could find nothing wrong with it. “He turns it on and it appears to
be working just fine,” McGuire says. “That was a significant problem for us; it
did not help their cause.” Of course, McGuire ultimately had to drop the case
when it appeared that any number of different people—from inmates to
guards—could have caused Richardson's head injuries. And because she was heavily
medicated at the time, it was certainly possible that the inmate could have
endured a serious injury without realizing until it was too late. But none of
this lets CCA off the hook. First, there's the issue that, no matter how you
look at it, Richardson was almost certainly killed in a CCA facility, which
Puryear glosses over in his correspondence with members of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee. In fact, Puryear makes her death out to be a veritable
mystery, even though it's ludicrous to imagine how someone could break their
skull and crack their ribs by simply slipping on the floor. So if—and we're
using the word “if” lightly here—she was killed in jail, that doesn't reflect
well on CCA. Then, of course, there's McGuire's fresh anecdote about the
supposedly malfunctioning camera, which makes you wonder if CCA took an awkward
stab at a cover-up. CCA and Puryear are already under fire for last week's
Time.com report, in which a former prison manager accused the company of lying
to its government clients about the safety of its prisons. Is there a pattern
here? It's next to impossible to gleam objective data from CCA, even though it
manages public facilities across the country. But with Puryear likely to face
additional additional questions from the members of the judiciary committee
about the Richardson case and other CCA matters, a little more transparency
might be in order. Developing....
March 14, 2008 Nashville Scene
Once thought to be a sure thing, Gus Puryear's nomination to the federal
bench is now in serious trouble. A devastating story published on Time
magazine's website yesterday alleged that the young attorney whitewashed company
reports in his role as corporate counsel for Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA). The story revolves around Ronald T. Jones, a former CCA prison manager
described as a loyal Republican like the judicial nominee himself. Jones claims
Puryear oversaw a reporting system in which the company basically lied to its
public-sector clients, minimizing outbreaks of prison disturbances in the jails
it operates. In theory at least, CCA is supposed to provide thorough and
objective reports to the government agencies who have outsourced the management
of its jails to the private company. But Jones says his ex-boss Puryear masked
or omitted details that could result in litigation, fines or bad press. That
aside, he behaved admirably. “When Puryear felt there was highly sensitive or
potentially damaging information to CCA, I would then be directed to remove that
information from an audit report,” Jones told Time.com. Today, The Tennessean
published a well-reported front-page story that included additional details,
including how in 2005 a CCA official once had the temerity to issue a memo with
potentially damaging information about a prison incident. That led to a change
in company policy—in which any reports to be made public had to be cleared by
the office of the general counsel. The Private Corrections Institute, which has
led the charge against Puryear, issued a press release calling on the Senate
Judiciary Committee to summon the nominee back to Washington for yet another
hearing. The group may well get its wish. It's been a dismal week for Puryear—right
as he tries to explain his membership in the historically discriminatory Belle
Meade Country Club, he now will likely have to defend himself against serious
charges of turning CCA’s cold, hard facts into creative fiction. It's still
possible for Puryear to survive this latest onslaught of bad press and go on to
become a good judge. But considering how much trouble he's had so far convincing
people he's up for the job, couldn't the Bush administration have just plucked
someone else? There are plenty of intelligent Republican attorneys in Nashville.
How many of them have Puryear's baggage?
March 14, 2008
Tennessean
A former Corrections Corporation of America manager is accusing the
company's general counsel and federal judicial nominee Gus Puryear IV of
overseeing a practice that produced misleading reports about safety incidents at
its prisons. Ronald T. Jones, who until last year worked as a senior manager in
quality assurance at the Nashville-based prison operator, said that Puryear
directed him and other staff to classify incidents such as escapes, unnatural
deaths and disturbances as less serious to make its performance look better in
reports to government agency clients. Reports prepared for internal use,
meanwhile, included more details about the specific incidents, Jones said.
Private Corrections Institute, an advocacy group that opposes prison
privatization and has been an outspoken critic of Puryear's nomination, Thursday
urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold another round of hearings at which
Jones could testify and Puryear be asked more questions about his actions.
"Alternatively, we support the position of not bringing Mr. Puryear's judicial
nomination forward for a committee vote," said Alex Friedmann, a former inmate
at a CCA prison and the group's vice president. At a Feb. 12 hearing before the
Judiciary Committee, Puryear faced tough questions on the 2004 death of a woman
at the Metro Detention Facility, possible conflict of interest with cases
involving CCA and its executives that are often filed in Middle Tennessee
District, where he would serve, and his membership in the exclusive Belle Meade
Country Club. In response, Puryear said that he would recuse himself for at
least five years from all cases involving CCA and its executives: said there
were disagreements among medical experts about what happened in the death of
Estelle Richardson at the detention facility; and promised to resign from Belle
Meade if he found its membership policies violated the code of judicial ethics.
Committee staff said any action on Puryear's nomination is unlikely until April
at the earliest. The committee has no more business meetings this week and
Congress is on Easter break for the next two weeks. The Judiciary Committee
usually does not hold additional hearings with the nominee and other witnesses.
Instead, the senators rely on written responses to questions and the transcript
of the original hearing when discussing and voting on a nominee. Puryear
couldn't be reached last night for comment. CCA denies allegations -- Louise
Grant, a CCA spokeswoman, called Jones' allegations inaccurate and added that it
paints a false picture of CCA's quality assurance process and of Puryear's role.
"We question the motives of this former employee, who was not in a leadership
position in quality assurance and resigned in lieu of termination," Grant added.
"If our interest was in under-reporting or not finding quality issues, we simply
would not have created this (quality assurance) department or its programs in
the first place." Jones denies that he faced termination at CCA. He now lives in
Detroit and said he left CCA to pursue a legal career. He said in his job he was
responsible for tracking information on events such as unusual deaths,
disturbances and audit findings and that the misleading practices began in early
2005, when the quality assurance department was put under Puryear as general
counsel. A CCA staff member in 2005 provided a report containing potentially
damaging information about an incident at a prison to a government client
without corporate approval, Jones said. That incident, according to Jones, led
to a new policy in which any reports that could be made public needed to be
cleared by the office of the general counsel. "Mr. Puryear then directed me, and
other quality assurance department staff who process audit report finding, to
create two reports for distribution of audit findings," Jones wrote in a
statement sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I would prepare one report
with all of the audit findings and auditor comments in it for "internal purposes
only" and a separate more generic report that contained only general information
about audit results as a whole." In a separate interview with The Tennessean,
Jones added that the more information that could potentially damage the company
if it was released publicly, the more that its operations and financial status
could be affected. In the corrections industry, the number of incidents such as
prison escapes, riots, and sexual assaults are among variables often used to
determine bonuses for employees from wardens to chief executives, industry
observers said. If a prison contract provides for a bonus, such incidents also
would be taken into account by a client government agency in determining the
award. CCA is required to file reports with the state on incidents such as
inmate-on-inmate assaults or inmate-on-staff assaults, disturbances and a daily
census of inmates at its prisons that house state inmates, said Dorinda Carter,
a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections. The department has
onsite contract monitors and other designated employees at the prisons that
report daily on incidents and another division that conducts annual audits of
the CCA prisons, she said. "We feel pretty sure that we're finding out about
incidents as they happen," Carter said. She added that CCA is required to follow
the same policies as the 13 prisons run by the state and that officials are
confident in their monitoring of the company.
March 13, 2008
Mother Jones
Most ambitious lawyers know that if they want to become a federal judge,
they have to fulfill several key requirements. First, they must schmooze the
right people, sit on the right bar committees, and make the requisite political
contributions. Then, above all, they must 1) pay nanny taxes, and 2) wait until
after securing a lifetime appointment to join an exclusive, discriminatory
country club. Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV, Bush's choice for a trial court seat
in the middle district of Tennessee, had ticked off most of the items on the
list by the time he was nominated last summer. He'd given money, befriended Dick
Cheney's son-in-law, and even prepped Cheney for the vice-presidential debates
in 2000 and 2004. But he forgot about rule number 2, an oversight that might be
his undoing. As a prison company lawyer with virtually no litigation experience,
Puryear's resume offers any number of reasons why he shouldn't be confirmed. But
inexperience has never stopped the politically connected from ascending to the
bench. Country club memberships, however, are a different matter. And Puryear
happens to be a member of the exclusive Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville, a
club whose racist history is so well known that even former Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist had the good sense to quit the club before running for office.
After Puryear's surprisingly contentious confirmation hearing last month,
several senators asked him to provide additional written answers to their
questions. According to the Nashville Scene, Puryear's responses aren't likely
to win him any friends with the Democrats on the committee, particularly Ted
Kennedy, who sent Puryear four sets of questions regarding the club, including
one about its racial diversity. Puryear replied in legalese, writing, “I am
advised that the club does not track its members based on race, nor does it
respond to such requests. I am personally aware that there are minority members,
but I do not myself know the number,” he wrote. The number of black members of
the Belle Meade Country Club is an open secret in Nashville, largely because the
number is exactly one. Belle Meade didn't allow black members until 1994, when
they admitted one guy, a lawyer from Atlanta. Today, that same guy remains the
only black member of the club. So either Puryear is being incredibly
disingenuous, or he is a lot dumber than his supporters claim. (The Nashville
Scene had no trouble figuring out how many black members the club had, after
all, so it's hard to believe Puryear, who's actually a member, couldn't do the
same.) It's rare for the Senate to see confirmation fights over trial court
judges, but Puryear could be the exception. His country club membership has
caught the attention of women's groups, who are mounting some opposition.
Feminist lawyer Gloria Allred has written a letter to the Judiciary Committee
raising questions about Puryear's nomination. She, too, doesn't buy his claim of
ignorance about the club's discriminatory practices, noting that the club's
"entire voting membership is male, "Lady members" are not allowed to vote, and
no women have been proposed for Resident Member status that would afford voting
privileges." As a trial court judge, Puryear would preside over a fair number of
sexual and racial discrimination trials, which is another reason women's groups
are worried about his nomination. If Puryear can't see the blatant, longstanding
discrimination going on in his own country club, can you imagine what he'd be
like in the courtroom? Egads!
March 13, 2008
TIME
As the top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), Gus Puryear IV, is known to sport well-pressed
preppy pink shirts, and his brownish mop of hair stands out among most of
President Bush's graying nominees to the federal bench. A favorite of G.O.P.
hardliners, Puryear, 39, prepped Dick Cheney for the vice presidential debates —
both in 2000 and 2004 — and served as a senior aide to two former senators and
onetime presidential hopefuls, Bill Frist and Fred Thompson. Political
connections, though, may not be enough to get Puryear a lifetime post as a
federal district judge in Tennessee. Puryear recently confronted tough questions
about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from Democrats
on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate
vote. Now, a former CCA manager tells TIME that Puryear oversaw a reporting
system in which accounts of major, sometimes violent prison disturbances and
other significant events were often masked or minimized in accounts provided to
government agencies with oversight over prison contracts. Ronald T. Jones, the
former CCA manager, alleges that the company even began keeping two sets of
books — one for internal use that described prison deficiencies in telling
detail, and a second set that Jones describes as "doctored" for public
consumption, to limit bad publicity, litigation or fines that could derail CCA's
multimillion dollar contracts with federal, state or local agencies. CCA owns or
operates 65 prisons, housing some 70,000 inmates across the U.S. According to
the company's website, it has a greater than 50% share of the booming private
prison market. CCA is also a major contributor to Republican candidates and
causes, and spends millions of dollars each year lobbying for government
contracts. (Puryear enjoys a friendship with Cheney's son-in-law, Philip Perry,
who lobbied for CCA in Washington before serving as general counsel for the
Department of Homeland Security, which has millions of dollars in contracts with
CCA, from 2005 to 2007.) The company has likewise given financial support to
tax-exempt policy groups that support tough sentencing laws that help put more
people behind bars. Like other prison companies, CCA has faced numerous lawsuits
that stem from allegedly inadequate staff levels that can be a cause of high
levels of violence in the prisons. Though hundreds of such lawsuits are often
pending at any given time, many brought by inmates in its own facilities, CCA
under Puryear has mounted an especially vigorous defense against them, refusing
to settle all but the most damaging. Jones knows CCA intimately. Until last
summer, the longtime Republican was in charge of "quality assurance" records for
CCA prisons across the U.S. He says that in 2005, after CCA found itself
embarrassed on several occasions by the public release of internal records to
government agencies, Puryear mandated that detailed, raw reports on prison
shortcomings carry a blanket assertion of "attorney client privilege," thus
forbidding their release without his written consent. From then on, Jones says,
the audits delivered to agencies were filled with increasingly vague performance
measures. "If the wrong party found out that a facility's operations scored low
in an audit, then CCA could be subject to litigation, fines or worse," explains
Jones. "When Mr. Puryear felt there was highly sensitive or potentially damaging
information to CCA, I would then be directed to remove that information from an
audit report." Puryear would not comment on the allegations. Jones resigned from
CCA last summer to pursue a legal career. According to Jones, Puryear was most
concerned about what CCA described as "zero tolerance" events, or ZT's —
including unnatural deaths, major disturbances, escapes and sexual assaults.
According to Jones, bonuses and job security at the company were tied to
reporting low ZT numbers. Low numbers also pleased CCA's government clients, as
well as the company's board, which received a regular tally, and Wall Street
analysts concerned about potentially costly lawsuits that CCA might face. In
2006, for example, Jones says CCA had to lock down a prison in Texas to control
rioting by as many as 60 inmates. Despite clear internal guidelines defining the
incident as a ZT, Jones says he was ordered not to label it that way. Instead it
was logged as, "Altered facility schedule due to inmate action". And this was
not unusual, says Jones: "Information was misrepresented in a very disturbing
way concerning the company's most important performance indicators, which
included escapes, suicides, violent outbreaks and sexual assaults." Companies
often try to show their best face to customers, and safeguard internal records
with "attorney-client privilege." But according to Stephen Gillers, a leading
expert on legal ethics at New York University, CCA's use of that privilege seems
like "a wholesale, possibly overreaching claim," similiar to the blanket
assertions of major tobacco companies that tried to keep damaging internal
documents from public view. Those assertions of privilege have been rejected by
federal judges as an attempt to improperly conceal their internal data on the
dangers of smoking from customers, the courts and legal adversaries. CCA could
also be in legal trouble if it minimized the tally of serious prison incidents
and, by implication, its possible financial liability. As chief legal counsel,
Puryear would have also had an obligation to ensure his board had all the
information it needed, good or bad, to make decisions. If Puryear's reporting
system had the effect of withholding information relevant to official prison
oversight, that could bear on his suitability as a federal judge by suggesting
his "disdain for the proper operation of an important function of government,"
notes Gillers. Contacted by TIME, CCA says that Puryear, "has served the company
well and honorably as general counsel and will be an outstanding judge." The
company denies allegations that it keeps two sets of books, saying: "A final
audit report is made available to our customers. Appropriate information
gathered in the audits is separately provided to our legal department." The
company adds that "CCA has produced all relevant, non-privileged documents in
litigation," that its board is regularly apprised of the most serious prison
incidents, and that "all appropriate" information is given to the financial
community. President Bush recently called Puryear and his 27 other judicial
nominees facing Senate confirmation "highly qualified." Whether or not the
Senate agrees on Puryear, Bush is likely to leave the White House with fewer
judges approved than Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, both two-term chief
executives.
March 5, 2008 Tennessean
The accuracy of testimony by Gustavus "Gus'' Puryear IV at his confirmation
hearing to be a federal judge is being questioned by four Democratic members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee. Puryear is general counsel of Nashville-based
private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America and was nominated by
Republican President Bush. After the February hearing, he provided written
answers to additional questions about the company's handling of the death of an
inmate at a company-run facility in Nashville, potential conflicts of interest
he would face as a judge and his membership in the Belle Meade Country Club. The
sometimes-pointed questions and Puryear's responses again raise the stakes in
his confirmation. Once thought to be routine, Puryear's nomination is being
fought by a coalition of civil rights, labor and other groups spearheaded by the
Private Corrections Institute, which opposes prison privatization. Puryear's
responses were released Thursday. Inmate death testimony -- Judiciary Committee
Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, along with Sens. Ted Kennedy of
Massachusetts, Dianne Feinstein of California and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin
questioned the testimony Puryear gave last month about the 2004 death of Estelle
Richardson. Richardson died at the Metro Detention Facility after she was
forcibly removed from her solitary confinement cell by four guards. She had a
fractured skull, broken ribs and liver damage. The state's medical examiner
ruled the death a homicide and the four guards were charged, but the indictments
eventually were dropped. Later, a civil suit brought by Richardson's family was
settled out of court when experts representing the family and the CCA concluded
the skull fracture occurred before she was extracted from her cell. At his Feb.
12 hearing, Puryear testified it was not clear how Richardson received her head
injuries and that they could have been self-inflicted. He said CPR done in an
attempt to revive Richardson could have caused her broken ribs and liver damage.
All four senators questioned that testimony, citing a letter sent to the
committee from Dr. Bruce Levy, Tennessee's chief medical examiner, who conducted
the autopsy on Richardson. He reiterated that the death was a homicide caused by
blunt force trauma that was not self-inflicted. Levy called "misleading at
best'' Puryear's comment about CPR causing injuries. Puryear responded by citing
a letter to the committee from David Smith, attorney for the Richardson family,
who wrote that the "the circumstances and causes of Ms. Richardson's tragic
death were complex and debated ... our own experts attributed the death to a
seizure.'' "There were also issues on whether CPR may have caused the liver and
rib injuries,'' Smith wrote. Puryear said the company's expert, Dr. William
McCormick, former deputy chief medical examiner for Tennessee, wrote that the
rib and liver injuries were "almost certainly'' caused by CPR and cited medical
research to back his claim. Promises made -- Puryear expanded on a promise made
during testimony that he would recuse himself for at least five years from CCA
cases and would also not take on personal cases involving company executives. He
said at the hearing he also would sell all of his CCA stock. Puryear also wrote
that he would resign from the Belle Meade Country Club if he discovered that the
club's membership practices violated the judicial code of conduct. Kennedy wrote
that the club did not allow blacks to join until 1994 and does not give women
the right to vote on club business. Puryear said there are no women who are
"resident members,'' the class allowed to vote, but that he knows of no policy
that restricts women from being recommended for that category. "I am not aware
... that any woman has been proposed or has sought to be proposed as a 'resident
member,' " he said. Judiciary Committee spokesman Erica Chabot said the
committee would likely not deal with the nomination until April at the earliest
because members may want to ask follow-up questions and Congress is out of
session the last two weeks of March. The full Senate must confirm the nomination
once it is out of committee.
February 25, 2008 Tennessean
Gustavus "Gus" Puryear IV is the top attorney for Corrections Corporation of
America, the Nashville-based private prison giant. He graduated with honors from
law school, is a deacon in his church and serves on the boards of numerous
community organizations. Now President Bush has nominated him to be a federal
judge for the Middle District of Tennessee. But Puryear has never been a judge,
has little trial experience, and works for and holds stock in a company enmeshed
with the federal government through campaign donations, lobbying and huge
contracts. And the company he represents gets sued a lot, many times in federal
court in Nashville. Civil rights and prison rights advocates and others say
those and other concerns make Puryear a poor choice to be a judge in the very
court where his company is often a defendant. And his answers at his
confirmation hearing earlier this month are raising questions among some
senators and the state's top medical examiner. What appeared to be a routine
confirmation process has suddenly become complicated. "During that hearing, a
lot of red flags were raised," said Erica Chabot, spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "You can bet there are
some follow-ups." Senators on the committee were given two weeks to submit
additional questions that will be sent to Puryear for written responses. Puryear,
39, declined to comment on questions about his fitness for the bench while the
confirmation process is ongoing, said Steve Owen, spokesman for CCA. Trial
experience lacking -- Letters opposing Puryear were sent to the committee by
Private Corrections Institute Inc., which opposes prison privatization; the
Alliance for Justice, an umbrella group of dozens of national civil rights and
other organizations; and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees. Among their arguments: Puryear doesn't have the proper legal
qualifications. Puryear spent less than three years in private practice in
Nashville before signing on as counsel for the Senate Committee on Governmental
Affairs, headed by then-Sen. Fred Thompson. Next, he served as legislative
director for former Sen. Bill Frist for about three years before becoming
general counsel and vice president at CCA in January 2001. Puryear's lack of
trial experience is a greater concern than his role as a corporate lawyer and
his lack of judicial service, said Douglas Laycock, a professor of the
University of Michigan Law School. "District court judges have to run a trial
and run it efficiently. It's just a different skill set," Laycock said. An
analysis of a database of the nearly 1,200 sitting and senior federal judges
shows slightly more than one-third served as judges prior to their appointment.
Only 18 served as general counsels or assistant or associate general counsels
for private companies. Puryear's lack of trial experience is probably why he
received a "qualified" rating by the American Bar Association, instead of the
higher "well qualified," Laycock said. Of the 67 judges nominated by President
Bush since January 2007, 14 received a unanimous or majority "qualified" rating.
The rest had unanimous or majority "well-qualified" ratings. Alex Friedman, vice
president of Private Corrections Institute, said conflict of interest is a major
reason not to confirm Puryear because lawsuits against the company and its
executives are often filed in the court on which he would serve. Friedman served
six years in a CCA-run facility in Tennessee. Puryear told the committee he
would sell off all his CCA stock and recuse himself from cases involving the
company. Laycock said "that CCA gets sued a lot is not a problem" because the
number of cases would be relatively small and could be picked up by other
judges. CCA and Puryear have strong connections to the federal government.
Puryear gave $3,000 to Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker's campaign in 2005-06 and
$1,000 to Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander in 2005. CCA executives and its
political action committee have given $48,950 to Alexander since 1989, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics. Corker has received $27,250 from CCA and
its executives. Puryear is a registered lobbyist for CCA and the company spent
more than $3 million in 2007 lobbying the federal government, according to
lobbying reports. It has received nearly $1.2 billion in federal contracts since
2004, according to a database of federal contracts compiled by the Office of
Management and Budget. Nashville death cited -- Another complaint is the
company's handling of the 2004 death of Estelle Richardson in the Metro
Detention Facility in Nashville. Puryear testified at his confirmation hearing
that her broken ribs and liver injuries could have been caused by CPR attempts
to revive her. Tennessee's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Bruce Levy, who conducted
the autopsy on Richardson, said in an e-mail that Puryear's "statement that the
rib fractures and liver damage could have been caused by CPR is in error and is
not based on sound forensic medicine." Levy has contacted the judiciary
committee. But Dr. William McCormick, the state's former deputy chief medical
examiner, concluded in a report prepared for attorneys defending the company in
a civil lawsuit that the injuries were "almost certainly" caused by the CPR,
said Joe Welborn, one of the attorneys. Four CCA guards were charged, but the
charges were dropped and Richardson's family ultimately settled a lawsuit
against the company. Both Tennessee Republican senators, Alexander and Corker,
released written statements last week repeating their support for Puryear. "The
American Bar Association investigated all allegations raised by liberal interest
groups, but still concluded that Mr. Puryear was qualified to serve on the
federal bench," Alexander said. The Senate Judiciary Committee is not likely to
hold a second hearing on the nomination, said Chabot, spokeswoman for chairman
Leahy. The committee will rely on the record of the first hearing and answers to
written questions to vote. It is not clear when that vote will take place.
February 22, 2008 National Lawyers Guild PR
On June 13, 2007, President Bush nominated Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV for a
position on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Mr.
Puryear currently serves as vice president and general counsel for Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest for-profit private prison
company. If appointed he would serve as a federal judge in the same jurisdiction
where CCA is headquartered. Since 2000, at least 260 federal lawsuits naming CCA,
company subsidiaries or CCA employees have been filed in the Middle District of
Tennessee. Such cases would constitute a conflict of interest for Mr. Puryear,
and assigning them to other judges would not be an effective use of judicial
resources. Of greater concern is that Mr. Puryear lacks familiarity with the
federal courts and has little trial or litigation experience. By his own
admission he has tried only two cases to verdict; he has been personally
involved in only five federal cases, most recently a decade ago. He is not
admitted to practice before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is over
the Middle District of Tennessee, and received only a "qualified" rating from
the American Bar Association rather than a "highly qualified" rating. Both
Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker strongly support Mr. Puryear's
nomination. Neither Senator has acknowledged the substantial financial
contributions received from Mr. Puryear and his employer, CCA – which include
over $80,000 to Senator Alexander and $27,000 to Senator Corker since 2004.
Further, Mr. Puryear mentioned in disclosure statements that he is a member of
the Nashville-based Belle Meade Country Club. The fact that Mr. Puryear
maintains membership in an exclusive, predominately white club that did not
admit its first minority member until 1994, and reportedly does not afford
voting privileges to female members but only to male members, is a matter of
significant concern for a federal judicial nominee. In an Associated Press
national wire article concerning Mr. Puryear's nomination, Vanderbilt Professor
Stefanie Lindquist was quoted as saying his judicial appointment "might slide
through as a compromise." The National Lawyers Guild does not believe the people
of Tennessee should have to compromise or settle for a less-than-qualified
federal judge to represent their interests in U.S. District Court. The National
Lawyers Guild calls on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to vote down this
unqualified, conflicted and controversial judicial candidate.
February 21,
2008 AP
A private prison company executive nominated to become a federal judge has run
into a determined opponent — a former inmate. President Bush in June nominated
Gustavus A. Puryear IV, chief lawyer with Corrections Corporation of America, to
become a U.S. district judge in Nashville. That led Alex Friedmann, who spent
six years at the company's prison in Clifton, Tenn., to investigate Puryear's
qualifications. He looked up every case where Puryear was listed on the docket
as counsel. The prisoner-turned-inmate advocate found only five instances where
Puryear was the attorney of record. By his count and Puryear's, the judicial
nominee has been involved in only two federal court trials during his career.
That's just one more case than Friedmann himself has handled in federal court.
Convinced that the well-connected Puryear was unqualified to be a federal judge
and might face a conflict of interest overseeing litigation involving his former
employer, Friedmann began a public relations campaign against the nomination
that led all the way to the Senate. He formed the group Tennesseans Against
Puryear and enlisted the help of the liberal Washington-based Alliance for
Justice and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,
both of which sent letters opposing the appointment. Puryear, a 1993 graduate of
the University of North Carolina law school, didn't respond to several phone and
e-mail requests left at his home and office for an interview with The Associated
Press. At a Feb. 12 hearing of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif.,
questioned Puryear about several issues originally raised by Friedmann and the
nonprofit Private Corrections Institute, a group opposing private prisons that
Friedmann helps run. Puryear told the Senate committee he already was selling
off his stock in the company, according to reports in The Tennessean newspaper.
He owned CCA shares valued at just under $1.3 million as of Feb. 1, according to
Lionshares.com, an online database of stock ownership. He also pledged to recuse
himself from cases involving CCA even after he no longer holds a financial
interest. The committee also questioned Puryear about whether the volume of
lawsuits against Nashville-based CCA — the nation's largest for-profit private
prison company — would burden other judges who would have to hear the cases when
Puryear recused himself. Puryear said it would not be a significant burden.
Friedmann's campaign against Puryear continues. He plans to send a letter to the
Committee on the Judiciary pointing out what he contends are inaccuracies in
Puryear's answers. The two men have never met. Although Friedmann learned of the
nomination because he keeps tabs on CCA, he insists his crusade is based on
Puryear's lack of qualification and not because he's a CCA executive. Friedmann
sued CCA and several employees in 1996 while incarcerated for six years for
armed robbery. Serving as his own lawyer, Friedmann eventually won a $6,000
judgment against a former prison unit manager for a civil rights violation.
Puryear's legal resume includes significant political work — serving as counsel
to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and junior counsel during the U.S.
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigation of campaign finance abuse
led by former Sen. Fred Thompson. He also was a debate adviser for Dick Cheney
in 2000. Stefanie Lindquist, an associate professor of political science and law
at Vanderbilt University, said courtroom experience is good but not essential
for federal judge nominees. She sees more significance in the American Bar
Association rating of Puryear as "qualified," instead of "well qualified" to be
a judge. "A 'qualified' rating is relatively weak. That's going to hurt him,"
Lindquist said. Lindquist said Friedmann's efforts are unusual for even
temporarily disrupting what should be a routine confirmation. There are about
180 Bush nominations pending as the administration and Democratic-controlled
Senate tangle over some sharply contested nominees. Of the Puryear nomination,
Lindquist said: "If there are other, more controversial nominees, this might
slide through as a compromise."
February 20, 2008 Mother Jones
In October 2000, Dick Cheney faced off for a debate with Connecticut Sen. Joseph
Lieberman. The 60-year-old Cheney appeared comfortable discussing the ins and
outs of policy and made good-natured jokes about Lieberman's singing abilities,
or lack thereof. Cheney's smooth performance reflected his many years in public
service. But the aspiring vice president also had a strong debate-preparation
team made up of longtime friends and GOP loyalists. Among them was Gustavus
Adolphus Puryear IV, a legislative director for Tennessee senator Bill Frist,
who was on contract with the Bush/Cheney campaign. Puryear apparently did such a
good job prepping Cheney that he was called in again in 2004 to help him gear up
for his debate with Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards.
Puryear's efforts on behalf of the Bush administration paid off last June when
the president nominated him to be a federal trial court judge for the Middle
District of Tennessee. Puryear certainly isn't the first judicial nominee
selected primarily for his political service, but still, his resume is
remarkably thin on the practice of law, a basic prerequisite even for the
best-connected political hacks. Puryear got his start in politics in the
mid-1990s working as counsel to the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs,
then chaired by Fred Thompson, as it investigated the Clinton fundraising
scandals. From there he went to work for Frist. Beyond a brief stint in private
practice for a corporate law firm when he was fresh out of law school, Puryear
has spent more time inside an executive suite than a courtroom. And it's that
corporate work that makes him an especially questionable candidate for the
federal bench. Puryear was in Washington last week for his confirmation hearing
before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Senators Arlen Specter (D.-Pa,) and
Dianne Feinstein (D.-Ca.) both put his resume under a microscope, noting his
conspicuous lack of trial experience. At one point Specter asked him point
blank, "How many cases have you actually tried?" To which Puryear answered: Two.
Indeed, according to his written questionnaire for the committee, of the two
cases he has tried in the entirety of his legal career, he was lead counsel on
one of them. The last time he litigated a case in federal court was more than a
decade ago. Puryear has spent the bulk of his legal career at the
Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private
prison company. As its general counsel since 2001, Puryear has made millions of
dollars working for a company that profits from the country's incarceration
boom, particularly through his recent sale of more than $3 million worth of the
company's stock. (His financial disclosure form shows a net worth of more than
$13 million.) His employer creates enormous conflicts for Puryear as a potential
federal judge, as the CCA gets sued all the time, often in the very district
where he hopes to preside as judge. Since 2000, roughly 260 cases have been
filed in that court against the CCA, its officers, and subsidiaries. In
addition, Puryear's current job involves overseeing the CCA's defense against
inmate litigation, a prison staple that he has publicly dismissed as a nuisance,
even though such litigation has led to significant verdicts and settlements
against the company. For instance, in 2000, a South Carolina jury hit the CCA
with a $3 million verdict for abusing juveniles. Other successful suits have
alleged that the company's employees abused inmates and provided negligent
medical care. Yet in a quote he no doubt now regrets, in 2004 Puryear said that,
"Litigation is an outlet for inmates. It's something they can do in their spare
time." Inmate lawsuits typically account for more than 10 percent of the docket
in Tennessee's Middle District, meaning that Puryear will see his share of them
if he gets confirmed. During his confirmation hearing last week, Puryear told
the committee that he would recuse himself from any cases involving the CCA—at
least, he said, for some time after he's divested all of his stock in the
company. He dismissed concerns about his conflict of interest by noting that the
CCA cases make up a small part of the court's workload and that his recusals
would not create problems for the other judges. But his promises to recuse still
don't get to the heart of a fundamental conflict: To the CCA, inmates are a
revenue stream warehoused at the cheapest price. This not exactly the view of
the criminal justice system you want from a judge if you are a defendant. A
trial court judge in Tennessee's Middle District can expect to handle more than
60 criminal cases a year. Every person Puryear sends to prison is a potential
money-maker for his former employer, which contracts with the federal government
to manage 15 detention facilities, and also holds federal prisoners in other CCA
institutions that house state and local prisoners when the need arises,
according to Steve Owen, the company's director of marketing and communications.
The number of inmates coming from Tennessee may be relatively small, but still,
it seems fair to ask whether Puryear's conflict of interest runs so deep that he
might have to recuse himself from criminal cases entirely. Thus far, Puryear has
largely escaped media scrutiny, as the activist groups that monitor the federal
courts tend to focus mostly on appellate courts and the occasional Supreme Court
battle rather than on trial court nominees. Puryear's CV also doesn't signal
fights on many of the hot-button social issues that usually set off a
confirmation battle. He doesn't sound—or look—like Robert Bork. He's young,
patrician, a model member of the exclusive Belle Meade Country Club, and
director of the Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville. But for his deep voice he
could be Niles on "Frasier." Nonetheless, Puryear might be in for an unexpected
fight, due in part to his decision to publicly dis jailhouse lawyers. Alex
Friedmann was one of those jailhouse lawyers. He spent six years inside one of
the CCA's prisons in Tennessee for attempted murder and armed robbery. Friedmann
actually sued the CCA while incarcerated for retaliating against him for his
comments to a reporter for The Nation. Representing himself, he took another
case all the way to a jury trial, where he mostly lost, though he won a default
judgment against a former unit manager. He also appealed a different case
against the state, over censorship, that went all the way to the Sixth Circuit
court of appeals where he won. "In that regard, I'm more qualified than [Puryear]
is," he observes, noting that Puryear isn't even admitted to practice in the
Sixth Circuit. Now out of prison nine years, Friedmann is an editor for Prison
Legal News, which is how he first learned about Puryear's nomination. After
doing a little checking on him, Friedmann ran across Puryear's quote about
inmate litigation, which didn't sit too well with him, and he set out to torpedo
Puryear's nomination. As a former CCA inmate and a board member of a Florida
nonprofit group that opposes prison privatization, Friedmann readily admits that
he's not a disinterested party in the nomination battle. Nonetheless, his
political instincts are sound. He is cobbling together a coalition to oppose
Puryear's nomination, including the American Federal State and Municipal
Employees Union, which opposes private prisons for their anti-labor positions.
Friedmann's currently at work trying to enlist the real powerhouse of liberal
judicial activists to join the coalition: women's groups. Friedmann has compiled
stats from the federal court docket on the CCA's lawsuit history in order to
highlight the potential conflicts of interest Puryear might face, and he picked
apart Puryear's resume and his responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's
questions last week. For instance, when pressed on his view of criminal
defendants and prison inmates, Puryear pointed to his service as a commissioner
on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Skeptical, Friedmann checked
out Puryear's attendance record with the commission. He says the commission held
eight public hearings between 2005 and 2007—and Puryear missed at least four of
them. "If the gentleman does have a genuine concern about inmates, why did he
miss half the meetings?" he asks. Friedmann is also raising significant
questions about Puryear's response to questions about the death of a female
inmate at the CCA's facility in Nashville. The medical examiner ruled that
34-year-old Estelle Richardson was beaten to death while in the company's
custody. She suffered a skull fracture, broken ribs, and liver damage.
Prosecutors indicted four CCA guards in 2005, but later dropped the charges
after being unable to determine the time of death. So far, no one has been held
responsible for Richardson's death, although the CCA settled a private lawsuit
filed by her family. When Sen. Feinstein asked Puryear about the case, Puryear
disputed the medical examiner's findings and claimed that Richardson's death
might not have been a homicide at all. He suggested that the broken ribs and
liver injury may have been caused by CPR. It's "common" for people to suffer
such injuries from CPR, Puryear said, to which a dumbfounded Feinstein
exclaimed, "Common?" Apparently not satisfied with Puryear's answers, Feinstein
asked him to provide the committee with further written information about the
case. Meanwhile, after the hearing, Friedmann called the Tennessee medical
examiner who worked the case, who he says reaffirmed the original finding that
Robinson's death was a homicide and that there was nothing to suggest her
injuries were caused by resuscitation efforts. Friedmann also spoke with the
lawyers who represented Richardson's family and he says that they told him that
the CCA never raised CPR injuries as a defense in the litigation. Puryear's
comments to the committee, says Freidmann, are "not supported by the medical
record," which makes him skeptical about Puryear's judgment as a lawyer—and his
credibility. Friedmann seems to recognize that prison inmates are not the stuff
of judicial confirmation fights, so he has also homed in on another issue that
might provide more traction, not to mention the interest of powerful women's
groups: Puryear's country club. The tony Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville
is so exclusive that you have to be a member just to access its website. It
didn’t admit a single black member until 1994, a racist history so potent that
even Puryear's mentor, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, quit the club
in 1993 when he first ran for office. While Belle Meade admits women, Friedmann
has heard that it still won't give "lady members" voting rights. (Troy
Cunningham, the controller of the club for the past 17 years, wouldn’t respond
to questions about women's voting rights, saying that "all questions flow
through the members," meaning that someone will have to put the question to
Puryear himself.) But if Friedmann can stir up controversy over Puryear's
country club membership, he might actually have a shot at scuttling his
nomination.
February 20,
2008 AP
Corrections Corp. of America spent almost $2.5 million in 2007 to lobby on
legislation and regulations related to the private prison industry. The prison
management company spent more than $1.1 million in the second half of 2007 to
lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online
Thursday by the Senate's public records office. The company lobbied on the
privatization of Bureau of Indian Affairs prisons and on the Public Safety Act,
which would outlaw private prisons, as well as the Private Prison Information
Act, which would force private prisons to make public the same information
government jails must provide. Corrections Corp. spent more than $1.3 million in
the first six months of 2007 to lobby on similar issues. In addition to lobbying
Congress, the company also lobbied the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of
Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Labor and Office of
Management and Budget. Corrections Corp. lobbyists included Bart VerHulst,
previously chief of staff for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.;
Mike Quinlan, former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons; and Gus Puryear,
previously counsel to Frist and an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of
the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.
December 12, 2007 All American Patriots
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today co-sponsored the Private Prison Information
Act of 2007, legislation introduced by Senator Joe Lieberman to increase
transparency and accountability at private prisons. The Private Prison
Information Act of 2007 will help to prevent abuse and neglect at private
prisons by requiring public disclosure of information about their operations.
“As the federal government continues to contract out the incarceration of
federal prisoners, it is essential that there be public disclosure about the
operation of these private prisons,” Senator Clinton said. “Right now, the
public does not have the same right of access to information about private
prisons as it has for federal prisons. There is a lack of accountability into
how tax dollars are being spent, which can place the safety of correctional
officers, surrounding communities, and prisoners at risk. This legislation will
help to ensure that citizens and elected officials can properly assess the
performance of private prisons and, if necessary, hold them accountable for
misconduct.” Currently, federal law does not require private prisons that house
federal prisoners to disclose information to the public about the daily
operation of their facilities, and many private prisons do not submit reports to
the federal government. This legislation will require private prisons that house
federal prisoners to provide the same information available to the public that
federal prisons are required to provide under the Freedom of Information Act.
Approximately 27,000 federal criminal prisoners are serving time in private
prison facilities. Additionally, more than 40,000 of the immigrants and asylum
seekers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains each year are held in
private detention centers. Studies have shown that correctional officers at
privately run prisons are paid less, receive less training, and experience
higher turnover rates than those at prisons run by government agencies. These
differences can lead to greater rates of assaults on staff, inmate on inmate
assaults, and escape attempts. The bill is supported by a broad coalition of
associations representing correctional officers and law enforcement officers and
public interest and advocacy groups, including Corrections USA; the Sheriff
Officers Association of Nassau County, NY.; the Suffolk County Correctional
Officers Association, N.Y.; the Westchester County Correctional Superior
Officers Association, N.Y.; the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME); the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE);
Amnesty International USA, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
November 12, 2007 AP
Private prison operator Corrections Corp. of America paid Sisco Consulting
Inc. $140,000 in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government,
according to a disclosure form. The form, which was posted online Nov. 7 by the
Senate's public records office, did not indicate any specific initiatives the
lobbying firm worked on. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company, which designs,
builds and manages prisons, jails and detention facilities, previously indicated
it spent $1.3 million lobbying so far this year on issues related to prison
privatization. The company owns 40 facilities, but also operates in another 25
facilities across the nation. Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that
could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a
federal law enacted in 1995. They must register with Congress within 45 days of
being hired or engaging in lobbying.
November 11, 2007 The Morning Call
For seven years before coming to Congress, Rep. Tim Holden was a Schuylkill
County sheriff. Here, he may be more of a warden. Holden last week testified on
behalf of one of four prison-related measures that he has introduced since the
start of the year. The Private Prison Information Act would require private
prisons that are awarded federal contracts to disclose the same information as
public prisons. ''Private prisons right now have no reporting obligations,''
Holden, D-17th District, said in an interview. ''There is an awful lot of
information that we cannot find out.'' Holden argues that without information
about how private prisons are staffed, how much training guards receive and how
many incidents occur, there's no way to hold them accountable. Private prisons
counter that they provide all necessary information to the agencies that
contract with them. Holden's district -- which includes parts of Schuylkill and
Berks counties -- is home to two state prisons and one federal prison. They
employ several hundred prison guards. But so far there is only one private
prison with a federal contract in Pennsylvania: Moshannon Valley Correctional
Center in Centre County. And Holden, who opposes private prisons, wants to keep
it that way. Without having to disclose the same information as public
facilities, Holden argues, private prisons aren't playing by the same rules when
they compete for federal contracts. ''It is a concern that they'd expand
[private prisons] anywhere in the country,'' Holden said. ''It is only going to
put the public safety at risk.'' Corrections officers have a keen interest in
keeping the industry public: Salaries and benefits are considered to be better
at state and federal-run prisons than at private prisons. But privately run
prisons have become increasingly common in recent years as the federal
government tries to meet the demands placed on it by a growing prison
population. The largest private prison provider, Corrections Corporation of
America, now has 65 facilities throughout the country. It opposes Holden's
measure, arguing that it already provides information necessary to the agencies
administering the contracts, if not the public. ''We have very comprehensive and
detailed standards which we meet with our public partners in terms of
information that is provided to them,'' said Louise Grant, Corrections
Corporation's spokeswoman. ''Transparency and accountability already exist with
the public-private partnership.''
November 9, 2007
Harrisburg Patriot News
Private prisons and other facilities hold about 25,000 federal prisoners.
They don’t have to tell the public how many guards they have per inmate or
whether serious crimes such as assaults or rape occur. U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, a
former Schuylkill County sheriff and probation officer, would shut them down if
he could. But there’s no support in Congress for that step. Instead, Holden,
D-Schuylkill, sponsored the Private Prison Information Act, which would require
the 12 private prisons operated nationwide that hold federal prisoners to comply
with the federal Freedom of Information Act. The Moshannon Valley Correctional
Center at Philipsburg, a 1,300-bed low-security facility that houses mostly
criminal aliens and offenders from the Washington, D.C. area, is one of 12
facilities nationwide. There are five in Texas, two in California, and one each
in North Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio. Houston, Texas-based Cornell
Companies, which operates the center in Philipsburg, operates other state
facilities for juvenile offenders in the state. Holden’s legislation would only
apply to facilities with federal contracts. “As the federal government increases
its use of private, for-profit facilities for incarceration of federal
prisoners, it is imperative that we ensure that information about the operation
of these prisons is readily available,” Holden testified Thursday before a House
Judiciary subcommittee. “The veil of secrecy surrounding private facilities
needs to be lifted.” Holden has two federal prisons and one state prison in his
district. He told the panel, whose members voiced no criticism of the proposal,
about the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown, Ohio. Members of a
state panel found 44 inmate-on-inmate assaults there during a one-year period,
compared with 305 combined assaults recorded by Ohio’s 32 correctional
facilities. The facility did not respond to state officials’ and media requests
for additional details, he said. “Most daunting of all, private prisons are not
required to provide incident reports detailing health care oversight, rape or
assault, weapons attacks, death, or escape at the facility,” Holden said.
Corrections Corp. of America, a company that manages about 70,000 prisoners,
opposes the measure, said Louise Grant, vice president of communications and
marketing. “We believe the current system works very well” and provides an
elaborate system for making information available, said Grant. Rep. Robert
Scott, a Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism
and Homeland Security, called Holden’s proposal a “good government bill,” but no
other members commented. The full House Judiciary Committee is expected to take
up the bill later this month or in December.
October 11, 2007 Arizona Republic
A Phoenix man and other parents whose children died at boot camps for
troubled youths gave wrenching testimony before Congress on Wednesday, urging
other families to avoid enrolling teens in such programs until there is more
oversight of them. Bob Bacon of Phoenix recounted how his 16-year-old son,
Aaron, died at a wilderness camp in Utah in the 1990s. "We were conned by their
(the camp's) fraudulent claims and will go to our graves regretting our
gullibility," Bacon told members of a House committee. The Government
Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also announced it has
identified thousands of allegations of abuse, some involving death, at boot
camps since the early 1990s. It cataloged 1,619 incidents of abuse in 33 states
in 2005. "Buyer, beware," said Greg Kutz, who led the GAO investigation. "You
really don't know what you're getting." Kutz said the GAO closely examined 10
closed cases where juveniles died at residential treatment camps. In half of
those cases, the teens died of dehydration or heat exhaustion. Other factors
were untrained staff, inadequate food or reckless operations, the GAO said. Five
of the 10 camps are still operating, some in different locations or under new
names. "Ineffective program management played a key role in most of these
deaths," Kutz testified before the House Education and Labor Committee. Rep.
George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the committee and requested the
investigation, has sponsored a bill designed to encourage states to enact
regulations. "This nightmare has remained an open secret for years," Miller said
in a statement. "Congress must act, and it must act swiftly." The death of
Bacon's son was one of the 10 cases studied by the GAO, but not the only one
with an Arizona connection. The sample cases did not include names, but some
were identifiable through news reports. One was the death of Anthony Haynes, 14,
at the American Buffalo Soldiers boot camp in Arizona in 2001. One of the
state's most high-profile camp deaths was that of Nicholas Contreraz, a
16-year-old Sacramento youth who died in 1998 while being subjected to
discipline at the Arizona Boys Ranch near Queen Creek. Bob Bacon's account was
among those Wednesday that outraged House committee members. Bacon said Aaron
was sent to the camp because of minor drug use and poor grades. The father said
he was fooled by the owners of the Utah facility into believing his son would be
well cared for. Instead, Aaron was forced to hike eight to 10 miles a day with
inadequate nutrition and was not given protective gear to withstand freezing
temperatures, Bacon said. When Aaron complained of severe stomach pains and
asked for a doctor, his pleas were ignored even though he had dramatically lost
weight and suffered from other serious symptoms, Bacon testified. According to
court documents, the boy's condition was ignored for 20 days, until he
collapsed. The autopsy showed he died of an acute infection related to a
perforated ulcer. Five camp employees pleaded guilty to negligent homicide, and
another was convicted of child abuse. All were sentenced to probation and
community service. Kutz testified that camp employees studied by the GAO were
often poorly trained. He said kids weren't properly fed and were exposed to
dangerous conditions, their cries for medical assistance ignored. He said that
in only one of the 10 sample cases was anyone found criminally liable and
sentenced to prison. The residential programs, designed to instill discipline
and character, can be privately run or state-sponsored programs and sometimes
include an educational or school-like component. They are loosely regulated by
states. There are no federal laws that define and regulate them. The programs
are marketed to parents who are at a loss as to how to help emotionally troubled
teens, Kutz said. Jan Moss, executive director of the National Association of
Therapeutic Schools and Programs, a trade group, said many kids have been helped
by the treatment programs. She said the industry is taking steps to improve, but
she added, "Clearly we still have a very long way to go." Kutz said there is no
comprehensive nationwide data on deaths and injuries in residential treatment
programs. Auditors found thousands of allegations in lawsuits, Web sites and
state records. "Examples of abuse include youth being forced to eat their own
vomit, denied adequate food, being forced to lie in urine or feces, being
kicked, beaten and thrown to the ground," Kutz said, adding that one teen was
reportedly "forced to use a toothbrush to clean a toilet, then forced to use
that toothbrush on their own teeth." At the boot camp where Anthony Haynes died,
children were fed an apple for breakfast, a carrot for lunch and a bowl of beans
for dinner, the GAO said. Haynes became dehydrated in 113-degree heat and
vomited dirt, according to witnesses. The program closed, and the director,
Charles Long, was sentenced in 2005 to six years in prison for manslaughter. The
autopsy on Nicholas Contreraz showed that after Boys Ranch staffers punished and
humiliated the teen for days, he suffered from a severe infection in the lining
of his lungs. Five employees were charged criminally, but all counts were
dropped. The ranch now operates under the name Canyon State Academy. Julie Vega,
Contreraz's mother, recently told The Arizona Republic, "I feel like he was
sacrificed, and some good things changed for the better because of him. But
nobody really paid a price for his death."
Correctional Treatment Facility
Washington, DC
CCA
March 18, 2008 The Huffington Report
At a moment when Democratic Party officials are urging voters to trust
unelected superdelegates to act in the country's best interests, HuffPost's
OffTheBus investigation into the background of DNC superdelegates reveals at
least one appointed superdelegate who is as likely to use his political
connections for personal profit as for the greater good. Take the case of Joseph
F. Johnson, a member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee from
Chantilliy, Virginia -a suburb of Washington D.C. -- and a superdelegate
currently tilting toward Hillary Clinton. Using his web of connections, Johnson
successfully lobbied for the construction of a private prison linked to a
company on whose board he sat; he managed to have that prison contract with
other companies he was linked to; and though the prison became a notorious and
dangerous failure, Johnson benefited personally, pulling in millions of dollars
in stock options and fees. Johnson first rose through the ranks of the
Democratic machine in the early 1990s, as executive director of Jesse Jackson's
Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He brought with him strong ties to D.C. government that
he'd built after his first job in the nation's capital, as chief of staff for
the city of Washington DC's city council head. He also managed Douglas Wilder's
successful campaign to become Virginia's first African-American governor in
1991. And Johnson advised Mark Warner on his successful 2001 gubernatorial bid
in Virginia. Johnson's reputation as a mover and shaker in D.C. Democratic
politics helped pave the way for his appointment to the board of Corrections
Corporation of America, the largest operator of private prisons in the country.
While serving in that position from 1996 to 1999, Johnson was instrumental in
convincing the local government in Washington, DC to pay CCA to run a prison in
Youngstown, Ohio for DC inmates, according to SEC filings for the company.
Meanwhile, two of Johnson's own companies, National Corrections and
Rehabilitation (NCRC) and MedCorr, were contracted to provide employment
rehabilitation and health services in the same prison he helped establish. The
private Ohio prison which Johnson helped establish was, according to
Youngstown's then-mayor, "a nightmare." By 1998, there had been two fatal
stabbings, 44 assaults, and six escapes at the prison. A Department of Justice
report found that under CCA, the prison had "failed to accomplish the basic
mission of correctional safety;" and prisoners eventually collected $1.65
million in damages and legal costs for their treatment under CCA. News reports
traced the problems at the prison to both CCA's management and D.C. Corrections'
practice of sending high-security inmates to the medium-security facility. The
problems, Johnson told the Washington Post at the time, weren't "anyone's fault,
it was just one of those things." Mr. Johnson nonetheless profited from the
deal, receiving $2.6 million in stock options for his work linking CCA with
officials in Washington, D.C. Calling his work "instrumental" to their receipt
of the contract, CCA said that Mr. Johnson had "exceeded his duties and
obligations" to the company and also paid him $382,000 for his "consulting
services" in helping to arrange the deal, and $991,000 for NCRC's services in
another CCA prison in Texas. Johnson had also helped arrange for Washington,
D.C. to sell one of its local prisons to CCA in 1996. Local activists complained
that procurement rules had been skipped over to hand the bid to CCA, but the
deal ultimately went through, and CCA then managed the facility and used NCRC to
provide services to inmates. When the Washington Post asked Johnson if he
considered his dual roles as a conflict of interest, he replied, "Not in my
mind." Two years later, the Washington Post reported that CCA faced $1.3 million
in fines for failing to provide services to inmates, including $536,000 in fines
for failing to properly administer medications and another $77,400 for failing
to provide vision services. The city's Department of Corrections, despite being
$8.8 million in the red, suspended most of the fines, according to Post reports
from the time. Johnson has over time expanded his list of companies; NCRC is
technically a subsidiary of his firm, the Johnson Companies [www.jcmps.com].
Under that umbrella, Mr. Johnson also houses the Houston-based Satellite
Tracking of People, LLC (STOP), which deals in GPS tracking devices for inmates
and parolees; the Nashville-based ConnectGov, Inc, which coordinates distance
learning; and the National Preparedness Training Center, which trains first
responders to disasters.
February 15, 2008
Washington City Paper
With so many millions of dollars walking out the door in Jimmy Choos, etc.,
courtesy of the tax scandal, you’d figure D.C. Gov would be totally into
recovering millions of other dollars it’s rightfully owed by the Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA). You’d figure that. But you’d be wrong. In a
classic case of buck-passing between the Office of Property Management (OPM) and
the Department of Corrections (DOC), the utility bill for steam used to heat the
Correctional Treatment Facility—located right next to the D.C. Jail and
privately operated by the Nashville-based CCA—has gone unpaid for years. What’s
owed is up for negotiation. Last March, former OPM director Lars Etzkorn (who
has since lost his job over that unfortunate police department relocation
fiasco) testified before the Council that OPM was “collecting monies owed.” To
wit: “For example, last month OPM presented to the Department of Corrections the
analysis for it to recover $5.7 million from the Corrections Corporation of
America…” OPM didn’t take over collecting the money, mind you, it presented an
analysis of how to collect the money. And this was after At-Large Councilmember
Phil Mendelson figured out in the 2006 budget process that DOC was actually
being billed for the steam rather than being paid for it. A year after OPM was
informed of that, a year after Etzkorn’s testimony throwing around “$5.7
million,” none of the money has been collected. And $5.7 million could be way
underselling it. To be fair to the CCA, the folks in Nashville didn’t know how
much steam they were using in D.C. until OPM installed a meter last March; a
bill didn’t even go out until a few months later, in June. According to the
bill, the meter shows that in six months—from June to December of 2007—the
Correctional Treatment Facility used more than $450,000 in steam. When you do
the math, and take into account that the CCA, according to its lease, has been
responsible for paying utilities on the facility since 1997…. well that’s
somewhere around $10 million to $11 million in danger of—poof!—evaporating. The
DOC, by nature of its relationship with the the jail, the next-door Correctional
Treatment Facility, and the CCA, has been the agency ostensibly in charge of the
lease with the CCA. But—and you’ll have to try and follow this alphabet soup—the
DOC thinks it’s the OPM’s job to get the CCA on board. Beverly Young,
spokesperson for DOC, e-mailed that succinct response to me this week: “The
Department of Corrections is not responsible for the collections. The matter is
ultimately an issue between OPM and CCA.” Mendelson agrees. The DOC, he says,
never should have been in charge of the lease in the first place. “The only
agency that should administer a lease is OPM,” he says, and further: “They (OPM)
screwed around last year with invoicing and not getting payment….They’re very
slow to act and we're talking about millions of public dollars.” At a hearing
last Friday, OPM’s interim director Robin-Eve Jasper (after being jousted by
Vincent Gray) faced Mendelson on this front: Mendo: “We should get answers
without having to think of every angle to ask the question. So I get the bills,
but it turns out we’re not getting the payment…” Jasper: “I’m going to have to
get back to you. We are billing currently, but the first bill didn’t go out that
long ago…and I don’t believe it was as high as $11 million….I will get back to
you with a detailed response.” Mendo: “What I was last told at our last hearing
on this was that the Office of Property Management was talking to the Department
of Corrections. I’m not sure why that makes sense. Why doesn’t the OPM talk to
CCA or to the CFO’s office?” Jasper: “I can’t answer that question…I can’t
answer why we were in discussion with the DOC rather than sending out a demand
note and just proceeding on that basis.” Mendo: “When you get back to me, can
you also go into what was going on prior to June 2007?” Jasper: “Yes, I believe
we’re trying to establish a baseline of a full year at this point and…establish
prior payments.” Mendo: “I’ve yet to receive any evidence that anyone has talked
to CCA, so this would all be a surprise to them when we send them a bill. That
would kind of help, I think, to talk to them.” Hey, it’s a start. OPM’s
spokesman, Bill Rice, did not return three phone calls. Stay tuned!
December 14, 2006 Washington Post
Two former female inmates at the D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility sued
the District and jail officials last week, claiming that male guards took them
to isolated parts of the jail and raped them. The women are suing under the
anonymous names Jane Doe and Jane Roe. They say the District and Corrections
Corp. of America (CCA), the private contractor the city hired to run the jail,
are responsible for the alleged rapes because of their failure to supervise and
train guards and properly investigate allegations of sexual misconduct. The suit
is also filed against the two jail guards whom the women allege raped them: Elry
McKnight and John Gant. The two women are alleging violations of their civil
rights, emotional distress and battery, and are seeking compensatory and
punitive damages. Doe, a Maryland woman in her late 30s, alleges that McKnight
raped her twice in April 2002 in a staff bathroom -- first while escorting her
alone to her cell as she returned from a court hearing, and next when he
pretended that he needed to take her to obtain a new identification badge. She
was serving time for selling heroin. Roe, a D.C. resident, alleges that Gant
forced her to perform oral sex on him in a jail broom closet in December 2003.
Roe said Gant was able to easily separate her from others by asking a female
corrections officer to let him speak with Roe privately in the hallway. Roe, who
was serving time on drug possession charges, was released in January 2004. Doe,
who has seven children and three grandchildren whom she hasn't told about the
incident, said in an interview that she struggled over whether to sue the city.
She said she worried about having to come forward and revisit an episode that
has caused her panic attacks ever since, but decided to do so because her
initial complaint was ignored. In the lawsuit, she alleges that she called 911
twice to get a police officer to come to the jail, but no one came. "It's like
they want to hide everything that happened," Doe said. "If you hide something,
it will happen to a lot of people." Beverly Young, a spokeswoman for the D.C.
Department of Corrections, said the city agency and its personnel cannot comment
on pending litigation. A spokesman for CCA said the company was not aware of the
suit and could not comment. The suit claims that the corrections department and
CCA treated the two women poorly in investigating their claims. Doe was taken to
see CTF Warden Fred Figueroa, and McKnight was eventually suspended with pay
during an investigation, according to the suit. Doe was given no information
about the investigation for three months, until she complained in June 2002 to
her sentencing judge that she had been raped in the detention facility, the suit
alleges. The suit also alleges that McKnight eventually was fired for smuggling
contraband to inmates. "I couldn't believe they [paid] no mind to me. They
thought I was going to be deported," said Doe, who grew up in the Dominican
Republic but is a U.S. citizen. "They just didn't care. They thought I was a
criminal. " Doe said she has stayed away from drugs since her release and is
trying to get a job as a construction apprentice. She said she knows she was
guilty of her crime and had to pay by doing time. "I'm not mad that I was put in
jail. But I was so shocked. I didn't know you had to give them sex, too," she
said. Roe was not available to be interviewed, but her part of the suit claims
that Gant told her she had to do what he said or he could use his power in the
records office to lengthen her stay in jail. CTF officers offered to put Roe in
a kind of solitary confinement when she asked for protection from Gant, the suit
says, but he ultimately resigned from CCA rather than give a statement regarding
the alleged rape. Deborah M. Golden, a lawyer with Washington Lawyers' Committee
for Civil Rights, who is a lead attorney on the suit, said the District and CCA
had a duty to set up procedures to reduce the risk that inmates at the CTF would
be sexually harassed or raped and to take substantive action when inmates made
rape allegations. Golden, who is working on the case with pro bono counsel
Thomas C. Hill, a partner at the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm, said
the women's claims weren't treated with the seriousness they deserved. "You
can't train someone not to be a rapist," Golden said. "But you can set up
procedures whereby lone women can't be taken out of their cells by a lone
officer. You can stop officers from taking advantage of people who are
incarcerated. You can train people to be alert to signs of trauma in the
population." The legal team said it hopes to get top-level officials to take
action to address sexual exploitation, a problem that has long plagued jails and
prisons around the country. "Neither woman disputes their crime," Golden said.
"But that doesn't mean rape was part of their sentence."
June 9, 2006 Washington Blade
Two transgender women said they plan to file a discrimination complaint
against the District’s Department of Corrections after officials at the D.C.
Jail refused to allow them to visit inmates because of their personal
appearance. Gigi Thomas, a client advocate for the local group HIPS, which
provides services to local sex workers, and Tiffany Everlasting, a HIPS
volunteer, said jail officials told them they could not enter the jail because
they wore women’s clothes but lacked identification classifying them as
biological females. The two women said they appeared separately and at different
times on May 30 at the visitor’s reception desk of the Correctional Treatment
Facility at 19th and D streets, S.E. The facility, known as the CTF, is operated
privately under a Department of Corrections contract with the Corrections
Corporation of America, a firm that operates prisons throughout the country. An
official with the D.C. Office of Human Rights said the action by the jail
appears to violate the city’s Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination
against transgender people. The act covers city government agencies as well as
the private sector, including private employers. Walter Fulton, program manager
at the command center for the Correctional Treatment Facility, said the facility
has a dress code policy that prevented “cross-dressers” from being admitted as
visitors. He said the policy, which was under review, was based on concerns
about how jail employees could conduct a “pat down” search of a transgender
person as part of routine searches of all jail visitors. He said the searches
were aimed at preventing visitors from bringing contraband, including illegal
drugs, into city correctional facilities. “It’s likely that accommodations will
be made to allow cross dressers to visit,” he said. Guard convicted of sexual
assault. The refusal by CTF officials to allow Thomas and Everlasting visitation
rights came less than three months after a D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a
guard at the same facility of sexually assaulting a transgender inmate. Court
records show that Robert Ali White, 37, was convicted of a single count of
first-degree sexual abuse of a ward for allegedly forcing a transgender inmate
to perform oral sex on him in December 2004. He was scheduled for sentencing on
July 21. D.C. police arrested White on Dec. 29, 2004, at the CTF facility after
an inmate reported that the corrections officer allegedly forced the inmate to
engage in a sexual act with him, according to court records.
August 14, 2003
The
union for D.C. corrections officers yesterday again publicly criticized the
private company that runs an annex to the D.C. jail, alleging a host of problems
from forced overtime to inadequate pay and calling for the city to cancel its
contract with the firm. But this time, the corrections officers were
joined by two D.C. Council members, who bring a new level of influence to the
long-standing complaints. At-Large Democrats Harold Brazil and Phil
Mendelson stood outside the District's Correctional Treatment Facility at 1901 E
St. SE along with union members, who called for the end of the contract the city
has with Corrections Corp. of America. The company runs a low- to
medium-security annex of the D.C. jail intended to house D.C. inmates with
substance-abuse problems and other medical needs. Brazil and Mendelson
issued ultimatums, saying that if the Nashville company does not address
numerous concerns outlined in an 18-page report by the council's subcommittee on
public interest, they will ask the mayor to end the 20-year contract signed with
the company in 1997. In November, the dispute between union members and
the company escalated after the union said poor working conditions may have
contributed to the death of an inmate in August 2002. They said staffing
shortages, faulty radios and trouble with the institution's telephone system
apparently hampered efforts to help the inmate. (Washington Post)
December 18, 2002
One inmate was killed and a second was wounded in separate stabbings over the
weekend at the D.C. jail, just days after another detainee was slain in a
similar attack, corrections officials and prisoner advocates said
yesterday. The inmate-on-inmate attacks took place over a 70-hour period
in different cellblocks. Officials with the D.C. Department of Corrections
said they put the jail on an indefinite lockdown after the latest incident
Saturday, restricting movements and activities of inmates, while D.C. police and
the agency's internal affairs unit investigate. The violence raised new
concerns among jail watchdogs about whether the detention center can operate
safely above a court-ordered population cap of 1,674 that was lifted in June
after 17 years. Yesterday's inmate count was 2,369. (Washington
Post-Staff Writer)
December 16, 2002
Givon Pedelton was behind bars awaiting trial on a drug charge, but he never
made it to D.C. Superior Court. Someone stabbed him to death at the D.C.
jail last Wednesday evening. Mr. Pedleton is the latest inmate to be slain
while int he city's custody. An inmate was also murdered last August in
the Correctional Treatment Facility, located near the jail. And life
behind locked gates isn't exactly safe and secure for members of the corrections
staff either: Between April and august of this year, they suffered about
15 assaults. The victims' injuries included a broken hand, temporary sight
loss in one eye, a broken nose and 36 stitches to one officer's face.
(Washington Post.com)
November 17,
2002
A long-simmering
dispute between union members and the company that runs
an
annex to the
D.C. jail escalated yesterday after the union alleged that poor
working
conditions may have contributed to the death of an inmate in August.
Union
members at the District's Correctional Treatment Facility at 1901
E
St. SE said
that staffing shortages, faulty radios and trouble with the
institution's
phone system apparently hampered efforts to help inmate
Benjamin
Brown, who
died Aug. 20. They made the allegation and detailed other
work-related
complaints during a news conference outside the facility, run
by
Nashville-based
Corrections Corporation of America.
The
public quarrel about such a sensitive case underscored how relations
have
deteriorated between the company and union leaders. Against this
backdrop,
other
problems have surfaced: Four corrections officers were indicted this
month
on charges
that they smuggled drugs, pagers and cash to inmates in exchange
for
bribes.
Littlejohn
alleged that the company has been trying to break up the
union
for
about a year and that managers routinely harass officers and threaten to
fire them.
He cited the firing in June of corrections officer Jimmie D.
Allen, a
church
deacon, for organizing a prayer meeting just outside the annex.
November 9, 2002
AND YOU THOUGHT
that once someone was convicted and sent to jail it meant
saying
goodbye to drugs, pagers and means of doing business with the outside
world.
This
week, prosecutors indicted four guards at the privately run
Correctional
Treatment Facility, a D.C. jail annex, on charges of smuggling
drugs,
pagers and cash to
prisoners in
exchange for bribes offered by undercover FBI agents. Three of
them were
working at the facility when they allegedly took the bribes. The
fourth, a
former
employee, allegedly served as a go-between. The Corrections
Department
brass would have you believe that the smuggling has nothing to
do with them
because the
Correctional Treatment Facility is run by the Corrections Corp.
of America,
a private concern that operates about 60 prisons elsewhere in
the nation.
Don't
buy it. The city pays the Nashville-based CCA about $20 million a
year for
handling the Corrections Treatment Facility, which, as far as we
can tell, is
not
being run
any better than when the city was operating prisons.
None
of this is the least bit amusing. It is a disgrace. Last year, 10
corrections
officers, including nine from CCA, were indicted on bribery
charges
stemming from a
similar
investigation. All 10 were convicted. But the corruption,
nonetheless,
goes on. What does that say about the competence and
efficiency
of the private firm that
is pocketing
millions of taxpayer dollars -- or about the agency that is
supposed to
be overseeing that operation? What does it say about a city
government
that
apparently
tolerates such a scandal?
November 8, 2002
Four
corrections officers at a privately run annex to the D.C. jail have
been
indicted on charges that they smuggled drugs, pagers and cash to
inmates in
exchange for
bribes
offered by undercover FBI agents, prosecutors said yesterday.
Three
of the four were employees of the Corrections Corp. of America, which
runs the
Correctional Treatment Facility in Southeast Washington under a
contract
with the
city, when they allegedly took the bribes. The fourth, whom
prosecutors
described as a former CCA employee at the facility, allegedly
served as a
go-between
for one of the others in his dealings with an FBI agent posing
as an
inmate's girlfriend.
All
were arrested by the FBI yesterday morning, prosecutors said. They were
indicted on
charges of bribery and introducing contraband into a penal
institution.
All
pleaded not
guilty in U.S. District Court and were released on personal
recognizance.
In a
similar investigation at the Correctional Treatment Facility last
year, 10
corrections officers were indicted on bribery charges, including
nine from CCA. All 10
were
convicted of various charges, prosecutors said. (The Washington Post)
June 29, 2001
Six former D.C. corrections officers pleaded guilty this week to federal bribery
charges after an FBI sting operation in which they accepted money in return for
smuggling cash and pagers to inmates, prosecutors announced yesterday. The
six men were indicted in U.S. District Court last month on charges that they
brought cash and pagers to inmates at the District's Correctional Treatment
Facility after accepting hundreds of dollars from a man who said he was acting
on behalf of inmates. The man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent,
prosecutors said. All have either resigned or been fired from the
Corrections Corp. of America, the private contractor that operates the jail
facility in Southeast Washington. (The Washington Post)
June 1, 2001
Ten D.C. corrections officers have been indicted on federal bribery charges
after an undercover FBI investigation in which they allegedly accepted money in
return for smuggling cash and two-way pagers to inmates, prosecutors said
yesterday. D.C. inmates are not supposed to have money or communications
devices, prosecutors said. But the corrections officers brought both into
the District's Correctional Treatment Facility after accepting hundreds of
dollars from a man who said he was acting on behalf of the inmates, they
said. The man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The
indictments followed a two-year investigation and were returned under seal on
Wednesday. Nine of those indicted worked for the Corrections Corp. of
America, a private contractor that operates the Correctional Treatment Facility
in Southeast Washington. (The Washington Post)
July 29, 1999 Washington Post
Two maximum-security DC inmates who were serving time for murder escaped
from two guards who were driving them back to a Virginia prison. The guards left
the door to the van unlocked and the inmates were somehow able to remove their
leg irons and flee.
March 14, 1999
A convicted killer, confined to a wheelchair cut through the bars on the
window of his eighth-floor cell, tied bedsheets into a rope and climbed out of
the prison undetected. The sheets unraveled and he plunged to the pavement
below. An unidentified woman picked him up and took him to a nearby hospital
where he was pronounced dead an hour later. (The Washington Post, March 16,
1999)
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC
CCA, Emerald, GEO Group, MTC,
Wackenhut (AKA Group 4)
July 21, 2008 First Amendment Center
A bill before Congress would extend the Freedom of Information Act to
require private prisons contracted by the federal government to release records
under the same standards as federal prisons. The Private Prison Information Act
of 2007 (H.R. 1889), introduced by Rep. Tim Holden, D-Pa., would require private
prisons and other correctional facilities under contract with federal agencies
to house federal prisoners to make their records accessible under the same FOIA
requirements that govern federal prisons. An identical bill was introduced in
the Senate (S. 2010) by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Prison privatization has
increased rapidly in the face of growing concerns over overcrowding, safety and
poor health care in public institutions. Desire to control costs has also led to
an increase in privatization. However, privately owned and operated facilities
are not subject to the same FOIA scrutiny as public agencies. Although the press
and public can retrieve information about privately run prisons from the
Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and other government agencies, private prisons remain largely
outside the scope of FOI laws. Of the almost 1.6 million prisoners in the United
States in June 2007, 7.4% of them were held in privately operated correctional
facilities, according to the June 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin. At
last count, in 2000, the BJS reported 264 private facilities under state and
federal contracts used to house prisoners. And there were 5.4% more prisoners in
private facilities in June 2007 than in June 2006, according to BJS. Private
detention centers are also used to house immigrant detainees. Two lawsuits filed
in the last two months aim to force private prisons to release records,
including one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union investigating the
deaths of immigrant detainees in federal custody. In May 2008, The Washington
Post ran a four-day series investigating medical conditions in immigrant
prisons. "Careless Detention" explored the deaths of 83 prisoners and detainees
in custody between March 2003 and May 2008. "Our correctional system is broken.
It is overcrowded and unsafe," said Mike Flynn, director of government affairs
for the Reason Foundation. "Contracting with private prisons gives us an ability
to better manage outcomes. I think contracts should require certain benchmarks,
like treatment programs, continuing education and job training." The Reason
Foundation is a nonprofit think tank that promotes "libertarian principles,
including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law," according to
its Web site. The largest private corrections-management service in the U.S. is
Corrections Corporation of America, which is headquartered in Nashville. CCA
posted $35 million in profits during the first quarter of 2008, according to a
company press release. CCA and other private corrections companies have seen
rapid growth from contracts with states and the federal government. The Los
Angeles Times reported in August 2007 that California state officials had signed
a contract with CCA to hold about 4,000 prisoners for $63 per prisoner, per day.
It would cost the state an average of $123 per prisoner, per day in a state
prison. As private corrections companies grow, so do questions about their
methods, success and profitability. The recent lawsuits seek answers to some of
those questions. The ACLU filed an FOI lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia after DHS failed to turn over documents related to the deaths of
immigrants held in public and private detention centers. The lawsuit also named
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of the Inspector General for
DHS. "DHS must not be allowed to keep information about in-custody deaths
secret," said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU National Prison Project,
in a press release. "It is imperative that ICE be held publicly accountable."
Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that covers prison issues, filed a lawsuit
against CCA in a Tennessee court on May 19 after CCA did not respond to a
public-records request. The lawsuit, Friedmann v. CCA, argues that CCA performs
a public function, and its records should be public. In 2002, the Tennessee
Suprem |
