Clarke County Jail
Athens, Georgia
Prison Health Services
December 6, 2004 Athens Banner Herald
The denial of medical care to a Clarke County Jail prisoner who later died from a heart attack was tantamount to the woman being "punished by death on a misdemeanor charge," according to a lawsuit filed by her husband in Clarke County Superior Court. In the lawsuit, Muscogee County resident Stephan Lamar Hubbard Jr. claims his wife, 40-year-old Laverne Rose Hubbard, died two years ago after repeatedly pleading for jail personnel to take her to the hospital because she was suffering with chest pain. In the lawsuit, however, Clarke County Sheriff Ira Edwards, Athens-Clarke County and the jail's contracted health care provider, Tennessee-based Prison Health Systems Inc., are all alleged to have been negligent in the training of jail personnel on proper emergency medical response and treatment procedures. Eight hours after arriving at the jail, the lawsuit states, Mrs. Hubbard was taken to the hospital after being found unconscious on the floor of her cell. "Mrs. Hubbard died of a heart attack, which would have been avoided if (jail personnel) had not denied Mrs. Hubbard medical care," the lawsuit states. "(Their medical) policy violated contemporary standards of decency."

Clayton County Jail
Clayton County, Georgia
Aramark
November 25, 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Extra officers had to quell a small protest of Clayton County inmates upset about cold meals at the jail. About a dozen male inmates were eating lunch in a common area at the jail on Tuesday when they began complaining about the meal, which was cold. “They were upset about the potatoes being undercooked and initially didn’t return to their cells,” Clayton County Sheriff Kem Kimbrough told the AJC on Wednesday. Guards summoned more corrections officers who were able to calm the inmates and get them back in their cells. The ordeal took only “a matter of minutes,” Kimbrough said. No injuries were reported and there was no force used, the sheriff said. “Once the extra corrections officers entered the section, everyone went to their cells without any resistance,” Kimbrough said. The protest occurred the day after the AJC visited the Clayton jail and interviewed disgruntled inmates about the cold food. On Sunday, the AJC reported that the 1,900 Clayton inmates have been eating cold meals for five weeks because of broken kitchen equipment. Five weeks ago, officials deemed the jail’s three large kettles -- used to cook rice, pasta and potatoes -- unsafe to use because of broken equipment. Last week, the county commission allocated $60,000 to purchase new kettles, but they won’t be installed until mid-January. The jail has also been operating for about a year without four stoves and three large skillets, which all broke down, food services manager Ricky Jordan said. Georgia law requires inmates be served two hot meals a day. The sheriff said inmates are still getting three meals a day and the same portions. Despite the lack of hot meals, Kimbrough said there has not been an increase in illness or complaints from inmates. Food vendor Aramark, which runs the kitchen at the jail, is working to heat some food in the sheriff’s staff dining area, Jordan said.

College Park Jail
Atlanta, Georgia
June 19, 2004
Murder charges have been filed against a supermarket security guard in the shooting death of a College Park teenager the guard suspected of stealing her car.  Kathryn Smith, who had been charged with aggravated assault in the shooting of Courtney Wright, 16, officially was charged with murder at a hearing Saturday morning, hours after Wright was removed from hospital life support systems and declared dead.  In addition, Smith is charged with aggravated assault and carrying a pistol without a license.  Clayton County police Capt. Jeff Turner said Smith told detectives she had gotten off a bus and was walking to her job as a security guard at Wayfield Foods in College Park when she saw the Pontiac Grand Am that had been stolen Monday from her and her domestic partner. It was parked at an auto parts store.  Investigators say Smith, 30, confronted Wright and they began arguing.  When he tried to drive off, Smith shot him once with her .38-caliber revolver, said Turner.  Maureen McLeod, an attorney representing East Coast Security, Smith's employer, said the agency issued a gun to Smith and that she completed training to carry the firearm at the store.  (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

September 24, 2003
Sabrina Byrd's lack of money ultimately landed her a 17-day stay in the College Park Jail this summer.   Byrd, a 27-year-old single mother of three children, was cited by the south Fulton County city 11 times for allowing her three dogs to run the streets without a leash and for not having them vaccinated for rabies.  She couldn't afford to pay the $852 in misdemeanor fines she had accumulated, so Municipal Court Judge George Barron put Byrd on probation and allowed her to pay the fines in 10 monthly installments. Because Byrd also would have to pay a $39 monthly fee to a private probation company, her monthly tab reached $124, according to legal documents filed on her behalf.  Byrd, who is unemployed and receives food stamps and spotty child support payments, couldn't pay the fines, so she stopped showing up for her probation meetings. Eventually, she was arrested for violating her probation, and Barron sentenced her to 25 days in jail.  Palmer Singleton, a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights, contends that Byrd -- a soft-spoken woman who has no criminal record -- wouldn't have spent one day in jail if she could have come up with the $39-a-month probation fee. Singleton challenged Byrd's jailing in Fulton County Superior Court and alleged that her imprisonment for inability to pay a fine violated her constitutional rights to equal protection. She was released the day of the court filing.  The center argues that the probation fees amount to unfair treatment for poor people: Someone with money would have paid the fines and fees and moved on, while poor people, such as Byrd, suffer great consequences, including jail.  The center is considering filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of such fines, Singleton said.  But Barron and others say that Byrd bears the responsibility of her predicament. The judge said this week that he jailed Byrd for her repeated flouting of the legal system, not for her failure to pay the probation fees. He said Byrd failed to appear for a court hearing to answer to the charges of violating the leash laws and also failed to appear for her probation meetings.  "She was not put in jail because she didn't pay a fine," Barron said. "She absconded from probation. She had 11 offenses. She also owned a particularly vicious chow. [Authorities] were very concerned about it attacking a child."  The judge said he would have held a hearing to determine whether Byrd was indigent but her court-appointed lawyer never asked for one.  'Taxed for being poor'  Even though Byrd is free, Singleton still maintains that the legal system focuses too much on punishing offenders, rather than helping them rectify the problems that got them in trouble. It wasn't until Singleton sought out the help of local pet stores and veterinarians that he was able to get Byrd's dogs spayed and vaccinated. One of the dogs was put to sleep while another was sent to a pet sanctuary in Utah. Byrd kept the mother of the two dogs, Ta-ta.  "The amazing thing is the probation company did nothing to help this woman with the dogs," Singleton said. "They just taxed her for being poor. Once we tapped into the right resources, we can help the dogs. We can't do that for Sabrina Byrd?"  Joseph Lowery, of the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, said he considers Byrd's punishment "medieval."  "I thought debtor's prison had been outlawed in this state," said Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that has put such probation fees on its agenda. "Poverty is no crime, and the court ought to find a way to let her work this situation out some kind of way."  People who violate the law in Georgia and are sentenced to probation must pay a monthly fee to be monitored. The Georgia Department of Corrections supervised probationers until 1997. But the state Legislature passed a law that year to place supervision of misdemeanor probationers in the hands of private companies. Now, 37 companies supervise about 200,000 misdemeanor state probationers.  Corrections still supervises felony probationers for fees ranging from $23 to $29 per month. Currently, there are about 130,000 convicted felons on probation in the state, according to Michael Nail, director of the department's probation division. Depending on the risk level, some probationers are visited at least three times a month at home or work by an officer. Low-risk offenders simply place a phone call or mail in a form once a month to an officer.  Probationers who cannot afford the monthly fee can apply for a hardship exemption. If the probationer is found to be legitimately indigent, the monthly fee is waived, said Nail, who recently became one of 11 members on the statewide County and Municipal Probation Advisory Council.  "It's a rarity that we return someone to the court solely based on their inability to pay," Nail said.  Clay Cox, chief executive officer of Professional Probation Services, the company that handled Byrd's probation, said it was difficult to offer Byrd any form of help, because she repeatedly failed to show up for her probation meetings.  Had Byrd worked with the company to prove her poverty, she could have appealed to the judge for an alternative sentence, such as community service, Cox said. His company even would have helped Byrd with a job search, he said.  "We love taking people's cases very seriously," he said. "But they've got to take their orders seriously and get it done."  'It went way too far'  Cox said about 9 percent of the cases his company supervises in the Atlanta Municipal Court system are considered indigent and that the monthly fees have been waived.  Byrd said she accepts responsibility for many of her problems. But she doesn't understand why someone such as herself spent 24 hours a day in a cell where she got two meals a day served to her through bars.  "At some point in life, we can sometimes just have a heart or a listening ear or a concerned spirit about a person, about their situation, rather than taking your job overly serious or passing too many unnecessary rules, where it disturbs or makes matters worse than they really have to be," Byrd said.  "I think a lot of things could've been resolved by caring about a person. I think it went way too far. I don't think the punishment fit the crime."  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

DeKalb County Children's Center
Georgia
WestCare
November 18, 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nearly two years ago, state child welfare officials closed the troubled DeKalb County emergency children's shelter and promised a new facility that would keep kids safe. Now an advocacy group says that promise has been broken. Lawyers at Children's Rights Inc. said children at the DeKalb County Children's Center face some of the same kinds of problems that plagued the previous shelter. Some children are not getting adequate medical care, clothing or education. And many languish there for long periods without proper treatment, the group said. "This is another frightening example of the Perdue administration's failure to address known dangers to children in the [state] foster care system," said Ira Lustbader, associate director of the New York-based advocacy group. Specifically, Lustbader said the center failed to do a required criminal background check on an employee who was a felon, and who later sexually assaulted a child at the center in May. Also, he said a school safety officer was so concerned about safety issues at the center that he refused to leave a child there in September. WestCare spokesman Jeff Dickerson said the facility is still working out some problems. Lustbader said an independent consultant's review of the facility last June, performed at the state's request, said WestCare's "support of the DeKalb County Children's Center borders on neglect."

DeKalb County Jail
Georgia
CMS/CHS
December 8, 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Adams v. Dorsey were an old movie instead of a lawsuit, calendar pages might blow past the camera, stopping briefly at the turn of the years from 1999 to 2004. Now it appears the story will continue past one more New Year's Day, because some disputes remain in the long and costly battle over medical care at the DeKalb jail. By mid-December, Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller will receive written arguments on one aspect of what may be the final steps in the lawsuit. Lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights, representing jail inmates, want to send in their own expert to review the care provided by the jail's private medical contractor. Lawyers for the county government and Sheriff Thomas Brown oppose that request. Also this month, the inmates' lawyers are to meet with the jail's medical staff in the first of what a court-appointed monitor recommends should be monthly meetings to review any complaints. The case began in 1998, finally yielding a settlement in March 2001. At the time, Fuller said that inmates with life-threatening diseases weren't being treated and that the jail's failure to adequately protect against contagious diseases posed a hazard to guards and the public. Later, Fuller ruled the agreement wasn't being followed. He found the county government in contempt and said he would continue to oversee the jail medical program until the agreement's conditions were met. Since the settlement, the jail's annual medical bill has increased from about $7 million to about $11.5 million. The county's legal bills for the lifetime of the case total more than $700,000.

February 16, 2004
A new court-appointed inspector says medical care at the DeKalb County jail has improved enough that a costly six-year legal battle could end soon.   The county has spent more than $700,000 in legal expenses on the case that began when inmates sued over poor medical care. Meanwhile, county jail medical costs have jumped to about $11 million this year from $7 million in 2001.  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

March 17, 2003
Georgia Philpot knows her complaints about her son's medical treatment by the DeKalb County sheriff's Department won't get the attention of many county residents.  Her youngest child, 21-year old Alan D. Philpot, has been held in the DeKalb jail since September for violating probation on a drug conviction.  He has a history of ear infections that required surgery, and began telling jail officials in October that he had a new infection, his mother said.  She said it took more than three months and at least 10 phone calls to various jail officials to find someone who made sure Philpot got the antibiotics he needed.  "The public is generally unconcerned about the medical care rendered to inmates," Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller wrote in a 2001 ruling in which he nonetheless tried to spell out reasons the public should care.  He cited society's moral duty to treat humanely and health risks to guards, jail visitors and the outside world.  Such charges and countercharges are part of an ongoing 3 1/2-year old battle over health care for the 2,700 men and women housed in Georgia's largest jail.  Tamara Serwer, lawyer representing inmates, insists inmates are still at risk and the public sector could be too, from inmates released with communicable diseases.  Failure to control communicable diseases, including tuberculosis, has been a frequent criticism in reports by Dr. Robert Greifinger, a former chief medical officer for the New York Department of Corrections.  He was appointed by Fuller to monitor the jail's compliance with its 2001 agreement to improve medical care at the jail.  Even as Greinger praised a new management team installed at the jail by private contractor Correctional Medical Services in his latest report in February, he said he found cases in  which there was not "timely and appropriate follow-up" for inmates whose chest X-rays showed a risk of TB.  (The Atlanta Journal Constitution)

February 25, 2003
Sheriff Thomas Brown on Monday said the DeKalb County Jail's much-criticized medical care system is close to earning national accreditation.  Brown called a recent positive review by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care a welcome counterpoint to a series of critical reports by a court-appointed inspector.  Brown described medical care at the jail as in a crisis when he took office two years ago. The jail has operated under a court-approved settlement of an inmate lawsuit over inadequate care since March 2001.  As recently as last week, the inspector appointed to monitor the settlement reported that minimum standards were not being met, though there were signs the jail's private medical contractor was trying to improve.  Brown said the reports by the inspector, Dr. Robert Greifinger, have focused on problems with individual inmates, while the accrediting commission review shows that the jail's overall approach to health care is sound. In a jail with 2,700 inmates, "you can miss one and not do something just right," the sheriff said. But, he said, "We think we're well on the way to solving this particular litigation."  That assessment was disputed by Tamara Serwer, a lawyer for the inmates who brought the medical care lawsuit. She said Greifinger reviews random cases and that the examples he has cited show "the system is not functioning."  She said the commission focuses on written policies. "It's a great thing to be accredited by the NCCHC, but it doesn't tell you anything about the way patients are actually treated." She said it was "amazing" that it took two years to get adequate policies in place. Actual improvement will take months more, she said.  (The Atlanta Journal)

January 24, 2003
A court-appointed inspector says some diabetics inmates haven't been getting proper doses of insulin at the DeKalb County Jail and the jail medical staff has been slow to react to potential tuberculosis and HIV cases.  Dr. Robert Greifinger, a former medical director of the New York State Department of Corrections, made the criticisms in a report after visiting the jail last week.  Greifinger visits the jail to monitor compliance with a 2001 settlement in a lawsuit over inmate medical care.  Greifinger said one diabetic inmate received no insulin for three days and "developed a life-threatening condition" that required emergency hospitalization.  He said he reviewed the records of four other inmates with diabetes that was "seriously out of control."  Two had foot ulcers and "none have had insulin adjustments to get them in control," according to the report.  Ken Fields, a spokesman for CMS, the company contracted to provide jail medical care, said it was not clear if some of the diabetic inmates Greifinger cited were recent arrivals.  Fields said CMS officials do not agree with Greifinger's assertion that no HIV tests had been ordered at the jail since Dec. 25.  He said he could not comment specifically on five cases in which Greifinger said CMS did not appropriately follow up on chest X-rays "suspicious for tuberculosis."  Tamara Serwer, staff attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, which filed the original lawsuit, said Greifinger's report signaled a need for further action to improve conditions at the jail.  (The Atlanta Journal Constitution)

August 9, 2001
Earlier this month, the court-appointed monitor released a scathing report about medical care at the jail and said that Healing Touch was doing little to improve it. The lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have filed a motion to put the jail's medical care under control of the courts.  DeKalb County hopes its newest contractor finally will improve medical care at the jail and get the court system off its back.  The County Commission Tuesday hired Correctional Medical Services Inc. of St. Louis to provide medical care to inmates at the state's largest jail. The contract, which is for up to five years, is worth at least $8.16 million a year, an increase of $1 million over the last contract.  In 1998, a group of inmates sued the county over poor medical care. Under a settlement agreement signed in March, the county agreed to improve the care and the court appointed a monitor to oversee the progress.   In April, the county's medical care provider ---Correctional Healthcare Solutions --- walked away from its $7 million contract. A local company, Healing Touch Inc., was given an interim contract.   Earlier this month, the court-appointed monitor released a scathing report about medical care at the jail and said that Healing Touch was doing little to improve it. The lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit have filed a motion to put the jail's medical care under control of the courts.  (The Atlanta Journal and Constitution)

Department of Human Resources/Department of Youth Services
July 16, 2003
State officials with the Department of Human Resources and Department of Youth Services should be giving a for-profit Shelby County youth services center a very thorough review after Jefferson County Family Court stopped the transfers of three girls to the center.  While Family Court officials wouldn't say much, other than to question conditions at Oak Mountain Youth Services, that should be enough to raise flags with state officials. Certainly, there's enough smoke to justify an inquiry by state officials, just to be sure there's no fire.  (Birmingham News)

Devereux Center
Cobb County, Georgia
September 6, 2003
Two 16-year-old boys charged with raping a 25-year-old Kennesaw woman early Thursday are only the latest in a regular series of runaways from a private center for emotionally disturbed teenagers, police records show.  Since Jan. 1, police have received 12 calls reporting runaways from the co-educational north Cobb County campus of the Devereux Center on Stanley Road in Kennesaw. In the last three years, police have responded to the center at least 114 times, including two reports of sodomy, Cobb police records show.  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Deyton Detention Facility
Clayton County, Georgia
GEO Group
May 22, 2007 Business Wire
The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO : 53.08, +2.03, +4.0% ) ("GEO") announced today that it has signed an initial 20-year agreement, with two five-year renewal options by mutual agreement, with Clayton County, Georgia (the "County") for the leasing and utilization of the existing County-owned 576-bed Robert A. Deyton Detention Facility (the "Facility") with the ability to expand the Facility by an additional 192 beds, which GEO is currently considering. The Facility is expected to be used by Federal detention agencies with a targeted date of occupancy of year-end 2007 after the completion of an estimated $3.0 million renovation. GEO believes that the Facility could generate approximately $14.0 million in annual operating revenues at full occupancy of 576 beds.

D. Ray James Prison
Folkston, Georgia
Cornell
July 27, 2010 Charlton County Herald
For years Charlton County Schools got well over $1 million annually in state funds to make up for the county's low tax base. Those dollars have fallen dramatically this year, however to just $27,000. Superintendent Steve McQueen believes local system funding has changed because of errors in the county tax digest. Because of the drop, the Charlton County Board of Education voted unanimously last week to appeal the digest to the state auditor’s office. “Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is get the equalization board to exercise their discretion and adjust our funding,” explained BOE Attorney Kelly Brooks. “When the state auditor’s office receives our appeal, they will notify the state department of education to hold off on the final determination of our funding for 2011.” The lawyer says this will buy the school system 45 more days, time enough the school board hopes, for the Charlton County Tax Assessor’s office to come up with an accurate tax digest. “There have been substantial post-levy reductions in the digest through timber tax appeals and Cornell’s appeal [on the D. Ray James Prison valuation],” said Brooks. “Call me skeptical but for six years in a row the county’s certified digest has meant nothing.” Last year for example, Charlton County’s certified digest was $332 million but the county, school board and cities never collected taxes on that amount. After the state approved the digest, but before payments started coming in, the digest dropped by $16.5 million because of the prison appeal. That one reduction amounted to a loss in property tax revenues to the school system last year of $252,000.

January 22, 2010 Times-Union
The Charlton County Commission, the county school system and Folkston are all hastily adjusting their budgets after a single successful appeal of a property assessment. Commissioners are expected to approve an "error and relief" agreement in February to reduce the assessed value of privately owned D. Ray James Prison from $97 million to $55 million. The successful appeal by Cornell Companies, owners and operators of the prison, will cost the city, county and school system at least $730,000 in anticipated tax revenue. County Manager Steve Nance said Cornell appealed the assessed value of the prison after it nearly doubled in 2009. Two new structures - an addition that will house 700 inmates this year and another facility for 300 prisoners from both Charlton County and the U.S. Marshals Service - were on the tax rolls for the first time this year, likely leading to the increase in value, Nance said. During the appeal, Cornell officials didn't dispute the accuracy of the appraisal of the facility. Instead, they argued it would be impossible to sell the sprawling prison complex for what the company invested because the structures are for very specialized purposes - to securely house inmates. They also claimed the original part of the prison, more than a decade old, had depreciated in value, Nance said. "They contended the value did not equal the cost," he said. The property appraiser who determined the appraised value never visited the prison until after Cornell filed an appeal, Nance said. Instead, the appraiser determined the value from manuals, he said. "She did not actually tour the facility until the appeal was made," he said. "After the tour, she agreed the value was too high. It was a lot more austere than she thought." Despite the hardship losing an estimated $334,000 in anticipated tax revenue, Nance said county officials have no plans to contest the ruling by the Board of Assessors. "It would be difficult for us to appeal our own valuation," he said. Also, there is no appeal process unless the complaint is taken to the Board of Equalization by the property owner, Nance said. "Is there any recourse [for Folkston and the school district]?" Nance asked. "I don't think they have the right to challenge this." Now, the already cash-strapped county will maintain a "continuous evaluation process" to cut spending to make up for the shortfall, Nance said. Folkston City Manager Pender Lloyd said the appeal will cost his city at least $108,000 in anticipated tax revenue - nearly a 5 percent cut to the city's $2.4 million budget. "We knew Cornell was probably going to appeal," Lloyd said. "We certainly had no idea it [the prison's value] would drop by $42 million." Lloyd criticized the timing, saying one appeal should not have so much impact to local governments. An appeal of the magnitude of Cornell's should have been resolved before the county digest was completed to give local governments an accurate estimate of how much revenue would be generated in taxes. The city will delay some projects planned this year, including construction of a new park, he said. Travel to conferences and training is also canceled, unless it is required by law, Lloyd said. "We have some revenues built up, so we can handle it," he said. "We're all affected and we've got to work through this thing. We've got to deal with it."

May 20, 2009 Yahoo.com
Cornell Companies, Inc. (NYSE:CRN) today announced that it has been informed by the Georgia Department of Corrections that the Department will not start using the Company's recently completed expansion at its D. Ray James Prison in Georgia. The Company's previous guidance, included in the first quarter earnings release, provided a base case that assumed that the 700-bed expansion at D. Ray James Prison would begin to ramp at the beginning of the third quarter of 2009, and an alternate case that, if the expansion was to remain empty for all of 2009, earnings for the full year would be reduced by up to approximately $0.08 per share. Today's updated guidance assumes that the expansion will remain empty for the remainder of the year. As a result, the Company now expects earnings per share for the full year of $1.62 to $1.70. The Company also reaffirmed the earnings guidance range for the second quarter of $0.42 to $0.46 per share.

September 6, 2008 Savanna Now
A Savannah man serving a life sentence for a 1984 slaying recently helped save a prison counselor being assaulted by another inmate. Arthur Lee "Leechain" Scott, an inmate at D Ray James Correctional Facility in Folkston, rushed to the aid of a female mental health counselor on Aug. 24, officials said. Another inmate who had been working with the woman in a one-on-one session had her in a choke hold, said Charles Seigel, spokesman for Cornell Companies Inc., a private corporation in Houston that operates the medium-security prison for the state. Seigel said Scott got there first and "really helped." "He and others reacted well, and he was very gallant and deserves praise for what he did," Seigel said. The unidentified counselor was taken to a hospital but suffered no serious physical injuries, Seigel said. The attacking inmate has been transferred to another facility, he said. The incident remains under investigation.

March 24, 2008 News 4 Jax
Federal prisoners at the D. Ray James Prison near Folkston, Ga., were locked down on Monday after prisoners resisted orders to return to their cells, Channel 4 learned. Prison officials said there were no injuries. The Charlton County Sheriff's Office said the prison did not request assistance. A spokesman for Cornell Companies, the private firm that runs the prison, said the lockdown is only in a newly opened pod that houses federal prisoners and does not affect the entire prison. Only 50 to 60 inmates of the prison's capacity of 1,640 were involved. Since the prison opened in 1998, it has expanded to become the largest privately run prison in Georgia.

Forrest Hill Academy
Douglas County, Georgia
Community Education Partners
May 7, 2008 Creative Loafing
Patti Welch was living in Douglasville when she went through a divorce last year. Atlanta was her chance to start over. Weary of her one-hour, 20-minute commute to the northside law office where she works as a paralegal, Welch found a duplex in the West End only 20 minutes from her job. But the move also was about her 15-year-old son, Patrick. He was a smart kid, a B student entering the 10th grade. But he'd gotten into fights. One took place just off school grounds and involved several kids, so officials labeled it "gang-related." That meant Patrick would be sent to Douglas County's alternative school. Even though she was confident her son wasn't in a gang, Welch didn't bother to appeal the school district's decision. She thought an alternative school might help him. And she hoped the 10 days Patrick spent in jail after his last fight would serve as a wake-up call. Welch knew her son would be sent to an alternative school when they moved to Atlanta. But she thought it would be temporary. Instead, officials told her that because Patrick had a gang-related fight on his record, he'd never be allowed to enroll in a regular school in Atlanta. She tried to make the best of it. When told he'd be sent to Forrest Hill Academy, she looked at her son and forced a smile. "Wow," she said hopefully. "They're putting you in an academy." Six months later, Patrick became one of eight student plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program in New York City. The suit alleges that Forrest Hill – which is operated by a for-profit company called Community Education Partners – is little more than a pathway to prison for Atlanta's unwanted students. "It would be a stretch to even call this a school," says Reggie Shuford, an attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program in New York. "There is little to no academic instruction, and its students are treated like criminals. It is nothing more than a warehouse, largely for poor children of color." The ACLU contends that Forrest Hill students, 97 percent of whom are African-American, spend most of their days filling out worksheets, for which they get no feedback. According to state figures, nine out of 10 students at the school are unable to pass the standardized state test for math proficiency. The figures also show that Forrest Hill is the most violent school in Atlanta. "It is a national disgrace that the Atlanta school system has handed over its constitutional responsibility to a private, for-profit corporation," says Emily Chiang, the case's lead lawyer. Forrest Hill wasn't quite the academy that Patti Welch had hoped for. The idea of putting problem children into an "alternative school" is a recent phenomenon in the world of education. Before a federal law that took effect in 1978, public schools had no legal requirement to provide education to special needs kids. If a child was violent, or continually disrupted the class, schools could kick him or her out. When the law took away that option, teachers and school systems faced the chore of trying to tame disruptive students. The trend of taking those kids out of regular classrooms and putting them into "alternative" schools began to take hold. That practice quickly led to allegations that some systems – under increasing pressure to churn out higher scores on standardized tests – were simply "warehousing" their undesirable students, out of sight and out of mind. "Those schools weren't about education, but just getting through the day," says Eric Freeman, assistant professor of educational policy studies at Georgia State University. "Those were the 'expendable kids.' It's no longer acceptable to have schools where kids are warehoused, but we still have a long way to go." When it was founded in 1996, Community Education Partners touted itself as a way to get expendable kids back into the mainstream. From the start, however, there were indications CEP's considerable political weight was as responsible for its rise as were its education programs. CEP was formed in Nashville by four men with heavy Republican connections.CEO Randle Richardson, was chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party from 1992 to 1995 and oversaw a 1994 electoral sweep in which Bill Frist and Fred Thompson won Senate seats and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Another co-founder, John Danielson, would become chief of staff for Education Secretary Rod Paige under George W. Bush. One of the initial investors, Tom Beasley, had chaired the Tennessee GOP before Richardson did. Beasley also founded the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs privatized prisons. Founded in 1984, CCA has grown to become the sixth-largest prison system in the country – trailing only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and four states. But the company also has faced criticism for understaffing, high turnover and lax security. According to a 1999 state audit, neglect of medical care and security at CCA facilities in Georgia amounted to "borderline deliberate indifference." The two companies – CCA and CEP – have turned out to share some parallels. Both had business plans that relied on obtaining contracts to operate government services. Both were started in Nashville by major Republican Party players. And both went to Texas to make their mark. Texas was a natural entry point for CEP. In 1995, George W. Bush had become governor, and his administration was brimming with ideas to reform schools. The bundle of changes would be touted during Bush's 2000 presidential run as the "Texas Miracle." In that environment, George Scott, president of a Texas nonprofit education reform group, helped CEP gain a foothold. "I got pulled into it by the former superintendent for the Houston school department," Scott says. "It's a sinister manipulation of reality to say that public education is meeting its constitutional and moral obligation to these children; we throw at-risk kids into alternative centers and forget about them. Then along came a company that said it was going to do something different." Scott says he first used his political connections to help the company land a contract to take over the education services at a juvenile detention center. He was impressed by CEP's pitch that its methods could help problem children get up to speed academically so they go back to mainstream schools. "You have kids in the ninth grade who can't do fractions," Scott says. "If a kid is in the ninth grade but is at the fifth-grade level, giving them an algebra book is useless. Under this program, we would start them at the level where they are at, and build from there. CEP promised two years of academic growth for every year a student was in their school." In 1997, Scott says, he used his relationship with Paige, then Houston's school superintendent, to help CEP land its first public school contract. Under the future education secretary's stewardship, the Houston Independent School District was becoming a cradle of the so-called Texas Miracle. Paige had put a system in place that held individual principals accountable for dropout rates and test scores. Then, the district signed a $17.9 million contract to turn the education of as many as 2,500 children to CEP. Initially, the corporation hired Carl Shaw – who was the former chairman of the Texas Education Agency's assessment committee – to develop an independent test to grade the progress of the CEP students. "I will never forget the day the school board approved the CEP contract," Scott says. "Randle Richardson and I were walking out of the building and I told him that not all the kids in this are going to make two [years of progress] in one. But that is going to be your strength. You'll say that you're being held accountable for the program." Before CEP's contract with Houston took effect, however, the first test results from the juvenile detention facility came back. Scott recalls that they showed the students weren't making much progress – some had even regressed. CEP blamed the test, and fired Shaw. Richardson disputes that account. He says Scott let his friendship with Shaw intrude on his judgment and that the scores showed 20 student inmates had regressed in math but that most had made great progress. His own expert looked at the test and determined it was flawed, an opinion seconded by the Texas Education Agency. Whether it was over a principle or a friendship, the incident left Scott with strong feelings about CEP. He now says the one thing he's most ashamed of in his professional life is helping the company get into the Texas schools. The absence of Shaw's test, he says, left the company devoid of the very thing that had attracted him to the concept in the first place: accountability. Instead, Scott says, CEP began to cull its political connections. A sitting Houston school board member was hired as a consultant. Sandy Kress, who later authored Bush's No Child Left Behind program, was hired as a lobbyist. And when the company opened the campus of its first alternative school, in Houston in 1997, former President George H.W. Bush was at the opening ceremony to offer his endorsement. "They put together a very powerful, politically juiced operation in Texas," Scott says. CEP followed its Houston deal with a five-year, $10 million-a-year contract in Dallas. Then, it moved on to Florida and Philadelphia. And all along it followed a familiar pattern: It hired well-connected lobbyists to sell the program and courted elected officials with generous campaign contributions. CEP claimed it had found the key to educating a student population that was thought to be beyond help. The schools used a computer-based education program called PLATO that CEP said enables students to quickly catch up to their age level in reading and math skills. The company was swept up in the middle of what became a nationwide education reform movement. Bush campaigned for the presidency heralding his "Texas Miracle" of low dropout rates and high test scores. When he was elected, he named Paige to his Cabinet and pushed through Congress the No Child Left Behind Act, which instituted high achievement goals for the nation's public schools. But even as it rode the wave of its association with Bush's education changes, CEP became a target of criticism. Some parents complained of prison-like conditions inside CEP schools. Others claimed CEP was, in reality, doing little more than warehousing problem students. There were official rebukes as well. An internal evaluation in Dallas found that "the model of education provided by [CEP] was untenable." "The reliance on non-certified teachers for the bulk of the student- teacher interaction was useful for the company to save money, but was not a design in the best interest of the students," the report went on to say. "Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do very well academically." CEP had even refused to provide its budget data to the school district, the report said, which made it impossible to know just how it was spending the money it received. In 2002, the Dallas school system fired CEP. By then, however, the company was developing its relationship with a new customer: Atlanta. It's unclear exactly how CEP came to acquire a $6.9 million contract to open an alternative school in Atlanta. Richardson says the school system contacted the company in 2001. Citing the pending ACLU lawsuit, Atlanta school officials won't even talk about CEP. At the time the contract was signed, Atlanta officials brushed aside concerns already brewing in Dallas. They cited a "task force" report that supposedly recommended the district privatize its alternative schools; when the AJC requested a copy of that report, however, school officials said they couldn't find one. It didn't take long for concerns to crop up in Atlanta. In August 2002, CEP opened its alternative school in temporary quarters at the old Archer High School. Parents of some of the students attended the Rev. Darryl Winston's southeast Atlanta church. "We were hearing allegations of mistreatment and a prison environment," says Winston, president of the Greater American Ministerial Council. "We met with the staff, and they admitted that 90 percent of what we described had to do with the building. The Archer High School campus was extremely chaotic. They told us the building did not give us an accurate picture of what the program was about." CEP even flew Winston and other community leaders to Houston to tour their schools there. "We were impressed by what we saw," he says. The company assured Winston the problem was that the Atlanta school had yet to find a permanent location. The company prefers a specific design for its schools. Kids are segregated into male and female classes, and the classes are isolated inside pods within the building. "In school, kids get in trouble in the hallway or the cafeteria or going to the restrooms," says Anthony Edwards, a CEP vice president. "So we control that. There are restrooms and water fountains in each of the common areas. It eliminates movement. Kids get in trouble when they're moving." Three properties had already been identified, but each was scuttled by community opposition to an alternative school in the neighborhood. CEP asked for Winston's patience, and he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, the company did what it could to strengthen its political ties in Atlanta. When school board members faced re-election in 2005, CEP and its executives gave money in four races. According to Fulton County records, Randle Richardson made a $250 contribution to Mark Riley, who easily won re-election. He also contributed $500 to Brenda Muhammad, a former board member who ran successfully to regain a seat. CEP's chief financial officer, Phil Baggett, contributed another $250 to Muhammad. CEP was more generous in two other contests: Richardson and Baggett each made three separate contributions to incumbent Eric Wilson that totaled $2,000, and newcomer Yolanda Johnson received a total of $2,500. Although Georgia law requires candidates to list the occupations and employers of their contributors on their disclosure forms, none of the school board candidates did that for the CEP executives. Muhammad says she had no idea Richardson and Baggett were CEP executives until CL told her. "If they were standing in front of me, I wouldn't know them," she says. "No campaign contribution will influence me from making my decisions based on the best interest of the children of Atlanta." Riley also said he was unaware that Richardson led CEP. "That's a little embarrassing," he says. "I make a point of never accepting contributions from vendors. I've even returned checks before." Six months after the school board began its new term, it extended CEP's contract to 2009. When school opened in August, Patti Welch and her son got their first look at Forrest Hill. Welch went through a 90-minute orientation, where the rules of the school were laid out. Patrick wasn't to bring anything onto campus that was considered contraband. The list included watches, jewelry, purses, combs, brushes, keys and money in excess of $5. Paper and pens weren't allowed either; the school would provide everything that was needed, even tampons for female students. Patrick would go through a metal detector each morning and be patted down by a security guard to ensure he didn't have weapons or drugs. Backpacks weren't allowed, and books couldn't be taken home. In fact, there was no homework for Forrest Hill students. Patrick went through a weeklong orientation that included tests on the PLATO computer system to determine where he stood academically. On his first day, he sent his mother a text message: "This school is so bad." He found the lessons boring. He complained that the teacher would simply put an assignment on the board; then the kids would be expected to do it on their own. Once the students were finished, they were given crossword puzzles to fill out. "Patrick found it totally uninteresting and totally unmotivating," Welch says. "He kept sending me text messages, and I didn't believe him. He started missing days, so I went up there." What Welch saw alarmed her. The building was new and well-maintained, but the pods where students were segregated reminded her of a jail. "There's one steel door to the classroom, no windows. It looked like a mini-prison." Not long after that, she heard the ACLU wanted to interview parents with children at Forrest Hill Academy for a potential lawsuit. Welch decided to talk to the organization. Two years ago, a special education lawyer in Atlanta called the ACLU and suggested they investigate the CEP school in Atlanta. "As soon as we began to scratch the surface, we were so outraged by what we found," says the ACLU's Chiang. "The standardized test scores are really shocking. No one was passing." State statistics show the school has made few strides toward improving its students' academic standing. According to state Department of Education figures from the 2006-07 school year, 91 percent of CEP's students failed the state's assessment test in mathematics; 66 percent failed the reading portion. In its latest contract with Atlanta, CEP agreed to a performance goal of making measurable progress in 31 categories for the 2005-06 school year, based primarily on results from the state's Criterion Referenced Competency tests. Of those categories, six couldn't be measured because there were too few students enrolled to get a proper study group, and CEP students showed improvement in 11 from the previous year. But in 13 categories, the students tested worse. In the final category – ninth grade physical science – there was no change: 100 percent of the students failed both years. "They cannot deny their standardized test scores are abysmal," Chiang says. Shirley Kilgore, a former Washington High School principal in Atlanta who now consults for CEP, counters that it's unfair to evaluate the program based on state tests. "Students in an alternative program are transient," she says. "We had a girl come in here last week. She's been here a matter of days, but her score belongs to us. Some of these students taking the tests have not been with us for any length of time." Richardson, the company's CEO, points out that almost 90 percent of students sent to Forrest Hill are at least two grade levels behind in reading and mathematics: "You wouldn't pass it either, if you're reading at the fourth grade level and you're taking a ninth grade competency test." The ACLU claims the heart of the problem is that Forrest Hill cuts corners when it comes to academics. The teachers don't teach, Chiang says, but instead hand out worksheets for the students to fill out. She also notes that CEP has a practice of hiring inexperienced teachers. According to state figures, the average level of experience of the teaching staff at Forrest Hill is less than a year. Kilgore, the CEP consultant, argues that few quality teachers want to work at an alternative school. "They are either committed to making a difference," she says, "or else a new teacher starting out." But at least one other alternative school attracts far more senior teachers: The average level of experience at Fulton County's McClarin Alternative School is 19 years. The ACLU also alleges that students often are manhandled by the school's staff, that teachers have even thrown textbooks at the children in their rooms. CEP denies there is any student mistreatment. "Inexperienced teachers are a recipe for problems," says GSU's Freeman. "These kinds of schools are special places and full of a challenging population of kids." Most of CEP's teachers aren't instructing in their fields of expertise either. According to state records, of the 76 total core classes taught at Forrest Hill, only 45 percent are taught by "highly qualified" teachers – those who have majored in the subject they teach. The statewide average is 96 percent. "We're very deeply concerned, especially in an alternative school setting where you need highly-qualified educators to work with the children," says Georgia Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard, whose group has lobbied against privatizing schools. "We don't think students should be put in a situation where a company is trying to make a profit off their education." CEP says it spends $9,300 per student compared with $12,406 per pupil for the rest of the students in Atlanta's public school system. The company contends the school saves money because it doesn't have to offer such activities as sports or music programs that are required in regular school programs. But Freeman's skeptical. While the savings sound efficient, he stresses that, in education, you generally get what you pay for: "These kids need a lot; they're needy kids. You need to spend more money on them than typical schools. If they are spending less, I'd want to know why it costs less to educate a student with exceptional needs. Where are they saving money? What are they subtracting and is it good? Are they saving money by hiring less experienced teachers who have no training in dealing with these kids?" Freeman is careful to say he hasn't studied Forrest Hill enough to make an ironclad assessment. But, he says, "I know people who teach in alternative schools. It's not an easy environment. It usually requires very special teachers who can work with those kids. It's a big challenge." The Rev. Darryl Winston is angry that he sees many of the same issues raised in the ACLU lawsuit that led him to confront CEP officials four years ago. And his anger isn't just directed at the company. "We need a statement from Superintendent Beverly Hall that she takes these allegations seriously and that the APS is looking into them," he says. "All we got was a statement from the press person that amounted to kind of 'dismissing' it. I've been told as recently as last week that the APS position is to wait and see what comes out in court." What especially frustrates him is that no one who isn't behind the walls at Forrest Hill can really know what's going on there. "CEP has denied every one of the charges, but there's no way to verify that," Winston says. "We need experts. I've called on the board of education to launch its own investigation and see if the charges are true. If they can't, they need a task force appointed by the governor to see what is going on at CEP." As far back as Houston, CEP officials have had to deal with complaints that the company's performance needed to be evaluated by independent parties. "We want to be held accountable for attendance and behavior and academics," insists CEP's Anthony Edwards. "It's very important to us that we are a standards-based program." CEP claims students who attended Forrest Hill in the 2006-07 school year were, on average, performing math and reading on the third-grade level when they arrived. The school claims that students who were at the school for at least 150 days made remarkable progress: an increase of 3.2 grade levels in reading and four years in math. Under its Atlanta contract, however, CEP both administers and grades those tests. There's no independent verification of the results, but longtime educators say making those kinds of academic strides in one year is virtually impossible. For a certain percentage of students who are highly motivated, yes, it can be done; for an entire student population, unlikely. "Kids with emotional and behavioral problems don't do well in school," Freeman says. "And kids aren't just going to snap to and start learning." Chiang says lack of progress on standardized tests make it clear the PLATO test scores are skewed. Students have told the ACLU that they take the PLATO tests unsupervised and can ask each other for the answers they don't know. "CEP claims a pronounced spike in the test scores, but we believe it is because of PLATO," she says. "In reality, there's no teaching going on." Edwards downplays PLATO's results. "We are not judged by these," he says. "It's just a mechanism, a diagnostic tool. The student is given a grade level of functionality." But the contract with the Atlanta school system says that Forrest Hill's success or failure will be measured by a combination of results from PLATO tests and state standardized tests. In addition, if a student who attends CEP for at least 120 days doesn't show growth in reading and mathematics of at least one year on the PLATO system, the contract mandates that CEP must educate that student at no additional cost to the school district until he or she has reached that level. Patti Welch says her son continues to struggle at Forrest Hill, and has missed extended stretches of school because he doesn't want to be there. But she says his disciplinary problems now seem to be behind him. She plans to take him out of the alternative school at the end of the year; she wants to home-school him. But ACLU lawyers say the federal lawsuit – which names the school system, board members and CEP as defendants – is about more than just eight kids in one school. It cuts to the heart of a public school's responsibilities to kids who are in the margins, and it raises questions about the risks of privatizing public education. "We see it as a broader national problem, the trend of privatization of government functions and warehousing kids in a school-to-prison pipeline," Chiang says. For the students at Forrest Hill, it's also about not being forgotten by the officials who sent them there. "The problem is that Atlanta didn't build in an adequate system for oversight and evaluation," Freeman says. "You want it written into the contract to have a good program evaluation. It's got to be done by people who know how to do it, people not connected to the school department or CEP so there's no conflict of interest." Freeman says there should be an annual independent review of Forrest Hill. Evaluators would go into the school, see the teaching methods, and interview students and teachers and the administrators. "I hope the CEP school is investigated by people who know what they're doing," he says. "There are good questions to ask, and they deserve good answers. The school can't answer those question, they can only provide the information. Somebody else has to be the evaluator."

Fulton County Jail 
Fulton, Georgia
Trinity Services Group (formerly run by Aramark)
July 18, 2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fulton County can't seem to resolve a $4 million deal to provide food service to county jail inmates, a contract marked by allegations of corruption and employee misconduct. The board failed to end the controversy again Wednesday with a deadlocked 3-3 vote on a proposal to keep the current company, Trinity Services Group, for another year. Commissioners, who have discussed the deal at length half a dozen times in the past several months, didn't bother Wednesday. They simply took the latest vote with no discussion. The deal has gone through several attempts to bid and rebid with three main groups seeking the work all being ranked No. 1 at different times. The controversy has generated bid complaints and lawsuits from spurned bidders that continue. Evaluators recommended Trinity in the latest round of bids completed June 15 over teams from Gourmet/Aramark and Meat Masters. Meat Masters has filed suit challenging the bids and the process and seeking award of the deal. The company's lawyer, Charles Mathis, accused county staff of improperly manipulating bid results to keep Meat Masters from winning the bid. County attorney O.V. Brantley said he looked into the allegations but found no reason to call in criminal investigators. The third bidder, Gourmet-Aramark Correctional Services, also says it was cheated out of the contract. The company filed a formal bid protest with the county. The firm also alleged collusion involving the other two bidders because Meat Masters filed a bid but also was included as a subcontractor on the winning bid by Trinity.

March 22, 2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fulton County will take a step back and ask more companies to bid on a contract to feed inmates at the Fulton County Jail. Fulton's County Commission voted unanimously Wednesday for a 90-day deferral on a vote to hire a food service provider for the jail and satellite facilities. County purchasing officials are to use the delay to advertise the contract in national publications that cater to the corrections industry. Commissioners weren't pleased by a staff recommendation to hire Gourmet-ARAMARK Correctional Services, which the county fired two years ago. Some commissioners drilled into the county's purchasing guidelines because they give a big bonus to companies that have an office in Fulton County. Commissioner Robb Pitts said Gourmet-ARAMARK would have won the contract even if all three bidders had scored the same in every category but one — location. For the sole reason that it was the only company with a physical address in Fulton County, the company outscored its competition and won the staff's recommendation, Pitts said. Chairman John Eaves said he didn't understand why Gourmet-ARAMARK got the nod when its $4 million bid was the highest of the three that were submitted. It was about $1 million higher than the low bidder. Eaves made the motion to defer the vote. Felicia Strong-Whitaker, a deputy director of the county's purchasing department, said the county's purchasing guidelines state that cost makes up 25 points of the formula used to recommend a company for this type of contract. A company gets an automatic 10 points if it has an office in Fulton County, she said.

February 21, 2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Amid allegations of bid rigging and corruption, Fulton County commissioners agreed Wednesday to rebid a lucrative food service contract at the county jail. County Attorney O.V. Brantley said Wednesday she's launched a probe into the allegations, but Commissioner Robb Pitts said any investigation should be turned over to state or federal agents. "Someone seems hell bent on giving the contract to this firm," Pitts said. "I'm going to find out why.... This is serious stuff...This needs to be investigated, not in house but by someone outside." The Trinity Services Group won the original contract in 2005, but it expired more than a year ago. When it was rebid in December, Trinity received the recommendation, even though it was the highest bidder of the three, according to county records. One of the firms that was rejected filed a formal protest with the county, and the other filed a letter, also with the county, claiming employees were pressured to change bid evaluations to ensure that the deal stayed with Trinity. Charles Mathis Jr. said his client, Meat Masters Inc., was the rightful winner of the contract with a bid that was $850,000 lower than Trinity's $4.1 million offer. They only failed, Mathis said in his letter, because county employees were pressured to doctor the bid evaluations. "Meat Masters should legitimately be awarded the contract," Mathis wrote. Two county employees, Sgt. Chandra Hall and former Chief Jailer Charles Felton, provided written statements to Meat Masters that they had been directed to change the contract evaluations to boost the results for Trinity. The Board of Commissioners has copies of the letters, which were also obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Both said they were threatened that if they went before commissioners with Meat Masters as the bidder they would be hammered. The other bidder, Gourmet-Aramark Correctional Services, has alleged collusion involving the other two bidders since Meat Masters was included as a subcontractor on the winning bid by Trinity. Lawyer Michael Coleman, who served as hearing officer for the complaint, issued a ruling on Feb. 16 that recommended Fulton rebid the deal. "Due to the questions raised by the county's rejection of Gourmet-ARAMARK's proposal and the collusion claims involving Trinity and Meat Masters, the appropriate remedy is to cancel the current RFP and re-issue a new RFP," Coleman found.

August 4, 2004
A company accused of serving bad food to senior citizens is moving on.  Aramark has voluntarily given up a $700,000 contract to prepare food for seniors and the homebound in Fulton County.  An 11Alive News investigation last month revealed numerous complaints about the company’s services ranging from spoiled and outdated milk to deliveries of fish that were not fully cooked, clumps of grease on food and one report of a roach found embedded in meat.  Earnestine Yarborough, a senior citizen, said she got chicken that was badly undercooked. "It was pink water running out of it and pink next to the bone,” Yarborough said.  (11alive.com)

Gainesville Jail (North Georgia Detention Center)
Gainesville, GA
CCA
July 31, 2009 Gainesville Times
Attorney David Kennedy says clients of his who have been held in immigration detention centers in South Georgia and eastern Alabama routinely are denied fundamental rights. "I have had clients who have had no access to phones for extended periods of time. I have had clients being questioned and induced into signing things they did not understand," said Kennedy, a Gainesville immigration lawyer. "I have had clients complain they were stuck in their cells for 23 hours a day. There’s definitely a problem with immigration detention in this country." On the eve of a new immigration detention center opening in Gainesville, a report issued this week by National Immigration Law Center appears to validate Kennedy’s complaints. The report, based on confidential Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents obtained in litigation, alleges there are pervasive problems throughout the country’s immigration detention facilities, many of which are operated by private contractors. Detainees are routinely denied visitation with family members, access to legal materials and regular recreation, according to the report. Many never get an explanation of their rights while being detained, the report claims. "The conditions are much more harsh than they ought to be," said the report’s co-author, Ranjana Natarajan. "This is a civil detention, and these folks are being treated like hardened criminals." The Corrections Corporation of America could begin boarding immigration detainees at its new North Georgia Detention Center on Main Street as soon as next week. The site of the old county jail adjoining the Hall County Sheriff’s office underwent $4 million in renovations and is being leased from Hall County for $2 million a year. CCA operates the detention center through an agreement with ICE and the county. This week, ICE officials did not deny the allegations contained in the report, vowing to continue to improve conditions. But Department of Homeland Security officials recently decided against creating uniform detention center standards that the National Immigration Law Center wants. ICE is supposed to conduct yearly evaluations of every detention center, but has no enforceable, binding legal rules on how inmates are treated, according to the report. "It creates a lot of gray area," Natarajan said. "Because (detention centers) are not expected to follow the rules, they’re all over the map." ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said agency officials "feel the NILC put together a very thoughtful report, and we will carefully review and take seriously this report, as we would any report. We are committed to continuously improving our immigration detention system." Gonzalez noted that within 10 days of taking office, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano ordered all immigration enforcement policies to undergo a review, "including detention." In February, Napolitano appointed former Arizona Department of Corrections director Dora Schriro as a special advisor for detention and removal. "Her position was created to focus exclusively on the significant growth in detention and detainment in the last few years," Gonzalez said. On any given day, ICE holds about 33,000 immigration detainees in facilities across the country, and supervises another 17,000 people facing deportation through electronic monitoring and other means. The National Immigration Law Center estimates that in 2008 about 220,000 people were held in detention centers prior to deportation. The typical stay is 30 to 90 days. The Gainesville facility operated by CCA is expected to hold about 500 low- and medium-security immigration detainees, many of them from North Carolina. CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant referred questions on this week’s report to ICE officials, but noted that "CCA does adhere in every one of our ICE detention facilities to the detention standards set by our customer." The company also has ICE officials on site for detainee access, Grant said. This week’s report prompted two U.S. senators to call for a change to the system. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced the "Strong Standards Act," a proposed bill that would set minimum detention standards and require the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that laws concerning the treatment of detainees are enforced. "These legislative initiatives will help reinforce what our great country has always stood for: liberty, the rule of law and basic human rights," Menendez said in a statement. To Kennedy, anything would be an improvement. "If we’re comparing these (detention centers) to their Turkish counterparts, they’re pretty good," Kennedy said. "But by U.S. standards, they’re pretty poor."

May 14, 2009 Gainesville Times
The private entity that soon will run the North Georgia Detention Center in Midtown Gainesville has asked the Gainesville Police Department to provide police assistance when the facility opens this summer. It doesn’t appear that city officials have any intentions of doing so. Police Chief Frank Hooper told the City Council Thursday that Corrections Corporation of America sent him a memorandum of understanding that requests assistance from the police department. The agreement would call for the police department’s assistance in quelling riots and other criminal activity at the immigration detention center, he said. City Council members opposed the idea. City Attorney James E. "Bubba" Palmour also advised them against entering into the agreement, which offered the city police department indemnification from any wrongdoing, Hooper said. Palmour said no amount of indemnification would protect the city if a "full-blown problem" arose at the facility, which will be housed in the old Hall County Jail on Main Street. "Once you have a death or a serious injury in a jail, it will take you five or six years to get through the litigation," Palmour said. Hooper said the city police department is not equipped with the training or equipment to deal with jail riots. "We shouldn’t be, because we’re a municipal police department," City Manager Kip Padgett said. Most council members said that any police protection should be the responsibility of the Hall County government, which is leasing the facility to CCA. "It sounds like the county commission needs to step up and accept full responsibility for that facility," said Councilman George Wangemann. Councilman Danny Dunagan also said any security responsibilities at the facility should fall on the Hall County Sheriff’s Office. He said the county should use the $2 million in annual revenue it receives from leasing the facility to CCA on providing police assistance. But sheriff’s Col. Jeff Strickland said the county agency this week signed a similar agreement with CCA and a separate agreement to house the North Georgia Detention Facility’s inmates in an emergency if there is room at the Hall County Jail. The agreement the county signed states that the Gainesville Police Department will be the agency that is primarily responsible to respond to incidents at the facility, Strickland said. "These (memorandums of understanding) are basically for emergency situations, which of course, the Gainesville Police Department does have the primary responsibility for," Strickland said. "However, if the Gainesville Police Department requested our assistance, then, of course, we would respond accordingly." Steve Owen, director of marketing and communications for the private jail operator, said if the city does not sign the agreement, it will not cause any problems for the North Georgia Detention Center. He said the memorandum of understanding sent to Gainesville officials was an effort to "get a working relationship" with local law enforcement agencies. Although Owen would not comment on specific concerns city officials cited Thursday, he said CCA officials were "more than happy to continue to have dialogue" with the city. "We want to be good neighbors," Owen said. The road to a working relationship between the city and CCA has been a rough one thus far. CCA’s plans to start operating the detention facility on Main Street conflict with the city’s dreams of a redevelopment in Midtown chock full of high-rise hotels, office buildings and walking trails — dreams that don’t include razor wire. Many of the problems between the city and CCA spring from a conflict the city has with the county over the future of the jail property. City officials announced their intentions to buy the property in late 2007. The deal never went through and both the city and county disagree on why the contract allowing the city to purchase the property was never signed. In the last round, city officials halted inspections and refused to issue building permit for renovations on the Main Street Jail, but later reneged "in the spirit of moving forward." However, Thursday, there still seemed to be some kinks in the relationship between city, county and CCA officials as Dunagan commented that the corporation taking over the Main Street jail is "notorious for mistreatment" of inmates — an allegation to which Owen responded that the fact that CCA operates in nearly half the states in the country, many of which have increased their utilization of CCA services, should speak for the company’s track record, he said. "I hope the county commission is real happy with what they’ve done," Dunagan said.

April 2, 2009 Gainesville Times
Gainesville City Council members met Thursday with the operators of the North Georgia Detention Center, and some say they still aren’t impressed with the efforts the jail operators are making to dress up the building’s exterior. The facility sits in the heart of Gainesville’s Midtown — an area where city officials have their sights set on beautification projects and redevelopment. Razor wire isn’t in those plans. The City Council has expressed its disappointment that Corrections Corporation of America, the private jail operator that soon will house immigration detainees in the old Hall County Jail, has no plans to take down the razor wire surrounding the facility. A CCA spokeswoman told The Times last week that razor wire is standard for all the company’s facilities. The company met with council members separately Thursday, showing them efforts to beautify the property. Councilman Robert "Bob" Hamrick said the company had plans to lower the razor wire, paint the fence surrounding the facility and plant junipers around it. "Well, it’s not exactly what we wanted," Hamrick said. "We were laboring under the thought that the fencing and the razor wire, this sort of thing, would be taken down." Councilman Danny Dunagan said he was not impressed, either. Dunagan and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Bruner met with CCA officials together. He said CCA officials told him of plans to plant Leyland cypress trees around the fence to eventually help cover the appearance of a jail. "In my eyes, that’s not enough," Dunagan said. "I don’t want to wait two or three or four years for the cypress to get big enough to hide it. I want it hid right now." Bruner and Councilman George Wangemann did not return calls requesting comment Thursday night, but Dunagan said Bruner "didn’t seem to think it was enough for her, either."

March 28, 2009 Gainesville Times
The Gainesville City Council is refuting comments made by Hall County Commission Chairman Tom Oliver to The Times regarding an agreement for the city to purchase the old county jail on Main Street. Oliver told The Times on Thursday that a 2007 contract securing the city’s purchase of the jail property expired in February 2008 and the city never signed it. But city officials said in a statement Friday that Hall County Attorney Bill Blalock instructed them not to sign the contract, which Blalock denies. In December 2007, the city announced plans to buy the jail from the county for $4 million with the understanding that the county could lease the facility to Corrections Corporation of America for seven years. The city would then have the option of razing the facility to make way for new development. Oliver said Thursday the contract for the purchase was hand-delivered to the city. "I don’t know what they did with it once they got it," he said. But city officials say they were told to hold off on signing the agreement until further notice from the county. "As the agreement was being finalized, (Blalock) told the city not to sign it because they were still working out some issues," according to the statement. "Blalock said if the city signed the agreement first, the city’s portion would be null and void. Blalock further commented that he would let the city know when the county had worked out the issues." Blalock denied the statement Friday, however, and said there would have been no reason for him to tell city officials not to sign the contract. Oliver also said he was unaware of any instructions against signing the contract. "That’s absolutely not true," Blalock said. "I don’t give city advice. I represent the county; they’ve (city officials) got their own lawyer." Blalock said, according to his records, the arrangement with CCA was finalized Jan. 24, 2008, and the final draft of the contract was delivered to the city’s former manager, Bryan Shuler, on Jan. 30. "I sent it to Bryan Shuler," Blalock said. "It was hand-carried to his office, and there were no instructions about not signing it. It was for them to consider whether or not they wanted to go forward with it. I never heard another word from them." Late last year, the county announced a 20-year lease for the jail property with CCA at a rate of $2 million a year. The newly renamed North Georgia Detention Center is expected to open in April or May. City officials said they knew nothing about the county’s agreement with the private prison operator until they read it in The Times. City Manager Kip Padgett said city attorney James E. "Bubba" Palmour and Shuler handled the deal. When CCA officials met with city officials, they indicated they had no prior knowledge of an agreement between the county and the city, Padgett said. The statement city officials released Friday said Palmour is "evaluating the situation of CCA and says the city will act accordingly based on local ordinances involving zoning, building and a business license."

March 27, 2009 Gainesville Times
Hall County officials say Gainesville City Council members who are unhappy about a private prison company’s long-term plans for the old county jail were given a chance to buy the property in a formal contract but never followed through. This week, council members Ruth Bruner and Danny Dunagan and City Manager Kip Padgett made public their disappointment in future plans for the jail adjacent to the Hall County Sheriff’s Office on Main Street. The building will house about 500 immigration detainees through an agreement between Hall County and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and a county contract with private corrections company Corrections Corporation of America. Padgett and Gainesville Planning Director Rusty Ligon met Tuesday with CCA officials. They referred questions about the meeting to City Attorney James “Bubba” Palmour, who said he was unavailable to comment Thursday. Council members said after the meeting they had hoped that the company would take down the razor wire surrounding the facility, and that they had believed the facility would hold low-risk, minimum security detainees. City officials said the razor wire creates an aesthetic eyesore in an area of midtown the city plans to revitalize. Dunagan also said city officials were under the impression that when county officials signed a lease agreement with CCA, they also would finalize a purchase agreement with the city. That plan, as first made public in December 2007, called for the city to buy the jail for $4 million, with the agreement that the county could lease the facility to CCA for seven years. The city would then have the option of razing the facility to make way for new development. Late last year, the county finalized a 20-year lease for the property with CCA at a rate of $2 million a year. The newly-renamed North Georgia Detention Center is expected to open in April or May. “The county went ahead and signed the contract with CCA with no communication with the city as to what was going on and what their intentions are,” Dunagan said. “We had to find out the hard way that they’d already signed the agreement.” Hall County Commission Chairman Tom Oliver on Thursday pointed to a contract prepared late in 2007 that was hand-delivered to city hall. The purchase agreement negotiated between the city and county had an expiration date of February 2008. It was never signed. “It was couriered to them,” said Oliver, who provided a copy of the 25-page contract to The Times. “I don’t know what they did with it once they got it.” Louise Grant, a spokeswoman for CCA, said Thursday that the company will house low and medium-security detainees, but no maximum-security detainees. Certain security measures, including razor wire, are standard for all CCA facilities, she said. “When we operate a facility, we operate it at a certain level, period, because we’re one of the safest, most secure correctional systems in the United States, and we’re very proud of our record,” she said. “Razor wire is part of our security protocol, and ICE has come to expect that.” Grant said she believes there may be a misunderstanding as to the type of detainees to be housed at the old jail. “Using the term ‘maximum security’ would be completely inaccurate,” she said. Most of the immigration detainees at the facility will have not been convicted of a crime, she said. Those that have would have already served out their jail sentences at sites such as Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County Jail, she said. “If ICE wasn’t detaining them for their administrative (deportation) process, they would already be out on the street,” she said. “They’re going to be held in our facility for a short duration of time while they’re being processed.” The average detainee will stay at the facility between 30 and 90 days, she said. Grant said CCA officials are sensitive to the concerns of local leaders.

March 25, 2009 Access North GA
Gainesville City officials said Wednesday Nashville, Tennessee based Corrections Corporation of America plans to house maximum-security convicted felons in addition to illegal immigrants awaiting deportation at its leased facility in the former Hall County Jail on Main Street downtown. CCA announced March 9th under a five-year Inter-Governmental Service Agreement between Hall County and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE),CCA will house up to 500 detainees at the facility. CCA said it would lease the site from the county for an initial term of 20 years with two five-year renewal options; The company currently anticipates opening the facility possibly the end of April and expects it to be fully occupied year’s end. “We found out yesterday (Tuesday) they’re going to house convicted felons and that we’ll have to have maximum security so the razor wire will not be going way,” Councilman Danny Dunagan said. “That’s not what we were told in the beginning.” “Also we were told in the beginning we’d be able to buy the property and the jail would go away in eight years and evidently that went by the wayside also.” Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Bruner said she had hoped Midtown would eventually be rid of the jail with its fence and razor wire in the heart of Midtown. “Now it’s a security issue,” Bruner said. “And it seems to me a blatant lack of concern on the county’s part about the citizens of Gainesville to want a corrections facility with maximum security prisoners right in downtown Gainesville in the part we’re trying to beautify right next to a park and where a hotel could look down on razor wire.” City Manager Kip Padgett said it was Council’s understanding CCA would be running a minimum-security facility for illegal aliens. “The understanding Council had was that it would a minimum security type facility house people awaiting deportation,” Padgett said. “Now we’re not so sure.”

March 23, 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A new detention facility planned for the heart of its Midtown district has some Gainesville officials wringing their hands. The city, in talks with Hall County and Corrections Corporation of America, wants to insure that the new prison, which will house up to 502 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, meets its idea of urban revitalization. The city began a project 10 years ago to clean up the rundown area and invested $250,000 in a study to map out a revitalization strategy, said City Councilman Danny Dunagan. That strategy did not include razor wire. Nashville-based CCA signed a five-year agreement to lease the old county jail from Hall County to operate the center on Main Street. The 20-year lease, with two 5-year renewals, will pay Hall County $2 million annually. “The last thing we want in downtown for 20 years is a prison,” Dunagan said. The city has invested a lot in its Midtown revitalization, including a new police/fire station. Plans also call for a 13-story hotel and two nine-story office buildings. The city had even worked out a verbal agreement with the county to buy the old jail, Dunagan said. The plan called for the city to then lease the facility back to the county so it could sub-lease it to CCA, he said. But that deal would have run for eight years, Dunagan said, then the city would have the option of shutting it down. Councilman George Wangemann said the city is behind the economic boost the prison could bring to the city, but he wants it to fit in with the aesthetics. Louise Grant, CCA marketing and communications director, said that while the company is in the business of operating prisons, it is working to resolve the aesthetics issue with the city. “Safety and security is our first and foremost priority,” she said. “We’re making a $4 million investment to upgrade the facility.” Grant said razor wire is common at all its 60 facilities, but alternative fencing is being discussed. Since last week’s announcement of the prison opening, CCA has received some 500 applications for the approximately 120 jobs available, Grant said. Since last week’s announcement of the prison opening, CCA has received some 500 applications for the approximately 120 jobs available, Grant said. Officials with Hall County did not return phone calls.

Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
June 2, 2006 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former prisons chief and parole board member Bobby Whitworth has been ordered by a Fulton County judge to begin a six-month sentence June 12 on a felony conviction for taking illegal payoffs. Whitworth, convicted in December 2003, had asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville that he be allowed to serve the six months in the Gwinnett County jail — about two miles from his Lawrenceville home. Glanville's order, which was signed Tuesday, was made public Friday. The Department of Corrections, which Whitworth headed from 1990 to 1993, has made arrangements for Whitworth to serve his time in a federal prison in Florida. Peggy Chapman, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, said officials will move forward to place Whitworth in federal custody. "We do have a contract with the Federal prison system to place high-profile prisoners," Chapman said in a statement. "We will continue work with them to decide placement." Whitworth was convicted of taking a $75,000 payoff to influence legislation that could financially benefit a private probation company while he was on the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. In addition to the six month sentence, Whitworth must serve the remainder of a five-year sentence on probation and pay a $50,000 fine.

October 12, 2005 Atlanta Journal Constitution
Former state prisons chief Bobby Whitworth seemed upbeat in June as he appeared before the state Court of Appeals to ask that his felony conviction for illegally influencing legislation be tossed out. But the appellate court recently affirmed his conviction. A jury convicted Whitworth in December 2003 of taking a $75,000 payoff while he was a member of the state parole board to initiate and push through 2000 legislation that financially benefited his friend's private probation company. He was ordered to serve six months behind bars but remains out on bond while appealing the sentence and conviction.

June 3, 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former state prisons chief Bobby Whitworth seemed upbeat Thursday as he appeared before the state Court of Appeals to ask that his felony conviction for illegally influencing legislation be tossed out. More than a dozen relatives and friends came to support Whitworth as defense attorney Jack Martin argued that the prosecution appeared to be tainted from the outset. A jury convicted Whitworth in December 2003 of taking a $75,000 payoff while he was a member of the state parole board to initiate and push through 2000 legislation that financially benefited his friend's private probation company. He was ordered to serve six months behind bars but remains out on bond while appealing the sentence and conviction. Martin said special prosecutor J. Tom Morgan, who had been appointed to the case by Gov. Sonny Perdue, had a hidden agenda to secure a criminal conviction against Whitworth, once one of Georgia's most influential state officials. "Mr. Morgan had a bias, an interest, a stake in the case," Martin argued. Morgan, then-DeKalb district attorney, was in negotiations for a lucrative job with Balch & Bingham, a law firm that once had represented Lisa Thompson, the whistle-blower in the case who testified against Whitworth.

June 2, 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former state prisons chief Bobby Whitworth, once one of Georgia's most influential state officials, will be back in court today to ask the state Court of Appeals to toss out his conviction for illegally influencing legislation. A jury convicted Whitworth in December 2003 of taking a $75,000 payoff while he was a member of the state parole board to initiate and push through a 2000 bill that financially benefited a friend's private probation company. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Alice D. Bonner sentenced Whitworth, 56, to serve six months in the prison system he once oversaw. Whitworth also was ordered to remain on probation for 4 1/2 years, to perform 100 hours of community service, and to pay a $50,000 fine and $50 a month in probation service fees. Whitworth's was the first known conviction in Georgia under a rare statute that makes it a felony to accept anything of value in exchange for influencing the passage or defeat of legislation. Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed then-DeKalb District Attorney J. Tom Morgan as special attorney general to handle the Whitworth case. Martin alleges that Morgan had a conflict of interest because he was in negotiations for a "lucrative job" with Balch & Bingham, a law firm that once had represented Lisa Thompson, the whistle-blower in the case. Morgan, now in private practice, accepted a job with the firm after Whitworth's trial. Whitworth has acknowledged accepting $75,000 from DMS, the private probation company formerly co-owned by his close friend, Lanson Newsome. But Whitworth insists the money was for providing guidance and connections to help Newsome expand DMS into Gwinnett, Clayton and other counties. Prosecutors allege that the money was a reward for initiating and ensuring the passage of a 2000 bill that removed misdemeanor offenders from state prison and probation systems and returned them to individual counties to complete their jail time or probation stints. Prosecutors contend that the bill was a financial windfall for private probation companies — like DMS — that would seek contracts with counties to provide those services.

January 8, 2004
Former state parole board member Bobby Whitworth was sentenced Thursday to serve six months in jail and to pay a $50,000 fine. Whitworth was convicted last month under a corruption statute that makes it a felony crime for a state employee to accept anything of value in exchange for influencing the passage or defeat of a bill.  Whitworth, 56, a former state corrections commissioner, was convicted of accepting a $75,000 payoff in March 2000 from a private probation company to initiate and ensure the adoption of legislative that could financially benefit the company.  (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

December 19, 2003
Former Gov. Roy Barnes testified Monday he would not have signed legislation had he known of a business relationship two state officials had with a company that could benefit from its passage.  In a rare court appearance by a sitting or former Georgia governor, Barnes told Fulton County jurors that he had a policy against even the appearance of a conflict of interest. He testified in the public corruption trial of Bobby Whitworth, a former member of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

December 11, 2003
Prosecutors delivered their final blow Friday to a former state parole board official on trial for public corruption -- and it was a wallop.  The surprising testimony of the state's final witness prompted defense attorneys to make repeated requests for a mistrial.  Tracy Masters, director of legal services for the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, testified that defendant Bobby Whitworth, a former influential parole board member, wasn't forthright about his business dealings with a private probation company.  Masters told jurors that if he had known all of Whitworth's financial dealings, he would have told him "it was improper, a direct conflict of interest and was unlawful."  Whitworth, also a former state corrections commissioner, is charged with accepting money while a state employee in exchange for influencing legislation. A conviction could bring up to five years in prison.  Prosecutors allege that Whitworth accepted a $75,000 check in March 2000 from Detention Management Services, a private probation services company co-owned by a close friend of Whitworth, Lanson Newsome. Legislation that was considered a windfall for private probation companies such as DMS passed that same month.  On Thursday, a California businessman testified that Newsome told him Whitworth received $75,000 from DMS to help with the legislation.  On Friday, Masters testified that he drafted the bill at the request of Whitworth. He also said Newsome sat in on parole board staff meetings about the bill during the legislative session.  Whitworth maintains he is innocent. He acknowledges taking the $75,000 from DMS but claims the money was for consultation work unrelated to the legislation.  Whitworth, considered an expert on the corrections system, helped Newsome's firm grow by giving him guidance and contacts, his attorney, Jack Martin, told jurors.  Masters said then-parole board Chairman Walter Ray and Whitworth came to him for legal advice in 1999. Ray asked if there was an ethical problem with his helping a private probation company expand into South Georgia.  "I said: 'If you have been offered this position because of your position on the parole board . . . I know that is improper and unethical,' " Masters testified.  Masters said Ray assured him that wasn't the case. Masters said he still cautioned Ray and Whitworth that the arrangement gave the appearance of a conflict of interest and that such an appearance alone violated an executive order by the governor.  Whitworth asked Masters for legal advice in 2001, after several news reports questioned why he and Ray were paid consultants for a private company when they were state employees.  Whitworth told Masters he had been on a retainer to advise DMS and he was supposed to get paid $25,000 a year, the lawyer testified. Payments stopped when Newsome's business slowed.  Whitworth "told me he wouldn't be paid until the business sold or the business improved," Masters told jurors. The legislation brought more business, and Newsome soon sold DMS for $8.2 million.  Whitworth initially said he needed the money to pay his income tax bill, Masters testified. Whitworth later claimed that Newsome might transfer a lakeside lot to Whitworth as payment for his services to avoid income taxes, Masters testified.  "He [Whitworth] immediately said: 'I guess from now on I need to say I was paid the money with intent to use it to purchase a lot,' and from then on, that was the story," Masters testified.  Claiming he had been "blindsided" by the testimony, Whitworth's attorney bolted from his seat and asked for a mistrial. Martin claimed prosecutors were accusing Whitworth of possible income tax evasion or at least "a bad act" unrelated to this case.  Fulton Superior Court Judge Alice D. Bonner told the jurors to disregard that portion of Masters' testimony, but she didn't declare a mistrial.  The defense will begin calling witnesses Monday.  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

January 5, 2003
If the former head of Georgia's prison system is sentenced to do time, he probably won't spend it behind the bars of a state institution.  Bobby Whitworth was convicted Wednesday by a Fulton County jury of using his position as a member of the state parole board to influence the passage of legislation in exchange for $75,000. Whitworth's sentencing on the felony charge is scheduled for Jan. 8. He could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.  Whitworth worked for the Corrections Department for 20 years, and was commissioner from 1990 to 1993.  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

September 26, 2003
A Gwinnett County grand jury indicted former state parole board member Bobby Whitworth on Thursday on two felony counts of influencing another state official in exchange for money, according to court records.  Whitworth is accused of attempting to influence action by Orlando Martinez and Ronnie Lane, who in 1999 were, respectively, commissioner and deputy commissioner of the Department of Juvenile Justice. Whitworth -- who was then a member of the Board of Pardons and Paroles -- allegedly tried to get Martinez and Lane to prevent a juvenile detention facility in Ocilla from closing. Whitworth was a paid consultant for the Bobby Ross Group, a company that had a contract to operate the South Georgia facility.  The Ocilla center was eventually turned into a facility for adult parolees, and was closed in 2002.  Jack Martin, Whitworth's attorney, said Thursday his client expected the indictments. "We're anxious to get in court and present our case, and we believe the charges are totally unfounded and when all the facts are considered he will be cleared."  Whitworth also faces one felony count in Fulton County. On Thursday, he pleaded not guilty to attempting to influence legislation in exchange for money.  In that case, Whitworth is accused of using his position on the parole board to influence passage of legislation in 2000 that financially benefited Detention Management Services, a company from which Whitworth had accepted consulting fees.  (The Atlanta-Journal Constitution)

July 27, 2003
Bobby Whitworth, who spent nearly three decades keeping Georgia's convicted criminals behind bars order deciding which ones could go home early, was indicted Friday on a felony charge of public corruption.  Whitworth, as commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections and later a member of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, earned a reputation as one of the most powerful and knowledgeable figures in the corrections industry.  It is the first time a parole board member or Corrections commissioner has been charged with a felony related to his duties, according to spokesmen for each agency.  Whitworth, 56, turned himself in and was booked into the Fulton County Jail at 2:41 p.m. Friday, just a few hours after special prosecutor J. Tom Morgan secured an indictment from a county grand jury. Whitworth was released about 5 p.m. on $5,000 bond, according to Lt. Clarence Huber of the Fulton Sheriff's Office.  If convicted, Whitworth could spend as long as five years in the prison system he once oversaw.  Whitworth's attorney, Jack Martin, said the charge against his client is "false" and that Whitworth is looking forward to a trial to be cleared.  The felony charge follows a lengthy corruption investigation into the actions of Whitworth and former Board of Pardons and Paroles Chairman Walter Ray.  Both resigned in June 2002 after widespread publicity about the investigation. Morgan did not seek an indictment against Ray, a former state senator from Coffee County. Ray cooperated in the case and will testify for the prosecution in Whitworth's trial, Morgan said.  The prosecutor said he determined that Ray broke no laws. "We did not find any evidence that Walter Ray was guilty of a crime," Morgan said.  The prosecutor also said the investigation of Whitworth is continuing. "There could be charges pending in other counties as well," he said.  Fees questioned  Whitworth, whose career in state government spanned almost 30 years, is accused of violating a Georgia statute related to the conduct of state employees, said Morgan, who is DeKalb County district attorney. He was appointed in April by Gov. Sonny Perdueto investigate the case.  The law prohibits state employees and state officials from taking money to influence the approval or defeat of legislation.  Morgan told the grand jury that Whitworth used his position to illegally influence the adoption of a bill that could have financially benefited Detention Management Services, a company from which Whitworth accepted consulting fees.  Whitworth accepted $75,000 from DMS the day before the state Senate passed the bill, Morgan said. The company was owned by Lanson Newsome, a friend and former Corrections deputy commissioner under Whitworth. Newsome is not under investigation because making such payments is not illegal, Morgan said.  The legislation "did nothing for the Pardons and Paroles Board, but DMS profited tremendously from the passage of this," Morgan said. He noted the company was sold later for $8.2 million.  The legislation turned over supervision of thousands of probationers to private companies, such as DMS. Whitworth allegedly had instructed parole staffers to lobby for it.  "Bobby has never accepted a dime in order to influence anyone in state government," said Martin, his attorney. "All he ever did was urge what he thought was best for the state, and more often than not he was right."  Martin said Whitworth has acknowledged accepting consulting fees from DMS and the Bobby Ross Group, a private prison company based in Texas. But the payments were for Whitworth's vast knowledge of the state's corrections system, not for help in winning enactment of laws favorable to the companies, Martin said.  "Bobby Whitworth is recognized nationally as an expert in corrections and prisons," Martin said. "Private companies have retained him to get his expertise and to have the credibility of his experience on their letterhead."  Martin said prosecutors offered Whitworth a plea deal but that Whitworth turned it down because he felt strongly he had not committed any crime.  Martin would not discuss details of the offer but characterized it as a "more than acceptable deal" if Whitworth had committed the crime.  According to several persons familiar with the deal, it would have allowed Whitworth to avoid a prison sentence by paying a $50,000 fine and serving five years' probation.  Arrangement defended  Martin said Whitworth had checked with parole board attorneys before entering into the consulting arrangement and that they had advised him it was legal, because the two companies had no contracts with the parole board. In an interview last year, Tracy Masters, director of legal services for the parole board, said, "I did not know which companies they were working for and who the managers of those companies were. I had no idea Lanson Newsome was involved in it."  Martin described Whitworth on Friday as "upset, confused, angry and ready to have his day in court."  Allegations of corruption at Pardons and Paroles arose in the summer of 2001, when the board's legislative liaison, Lisa Phillips Thompson, told then-Gov. Roy Barnes of possible wrongdoing. The parole board decides which of Georgia's 47,000 prison inmates are released early. The board also is the sole authority in Georgia that can commute a death sentence.  Thompson was married at the time to Barnes' Senate floor leader and childhood friend, Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Powder Springs).  She told Barnes that Ray had accepted thousands of dollars from Newsome shortly after she and other parole board staff members were instructed to lobby for a bill that was a potential windfall for private probation companies, including Newsome's.  'Whistle-blower' lauded  Whitworth eventually acknowledged receiving $75,000 from DMS and $135,000 over five years from the Bobby Ross Group, while Ray said he got $24,500 from Newsome over four years.  On Friday, Morgan commended Thompson for being the "whistle-blower" who started the investigation. "If she had not come forward with information, state officials would never have known about this," he said.  Thompson said Friday she had mixed feelings about the indictment.  "I was damaged by this, both personally and professionally," she said. "While I'm fine now, I'm very sad to see this happen, especially to someone I've known for so many years. But I did my legal constitutional duty in reporting what I knew to Governor Barnes and his chief of staff, Bobby Kahn. At that point, it was out of my hands."  Kahn said Friday the government had done what it had to do. "Our goal from the start was to make sure this was handled in a proper manner," Kahn said. "I hate to see anybody undergo legal troubles, but if that's what's required, that's what's required."  Attorney General Thurbert Baker declined comment Friday. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment because our office has recused itself from this investigation," his spokesman said. Baker stepped aside last year after it was alleged that his office had sought to destroy evidence of improper contact with the parole board on behalf of an inmate.  Barnes then appointed Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Pete Skandalakis as special prosecutor to take over the investigation. Skandalakis eventually cleared Baker of any wrongdoing.  Pension not at risk  Whitworth began his corrections career in 1973 with the department's Farm Services division. He became commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections in 1990, but then-Gov. Zell Miller removed him from that job in 1993 over the handling of a women's prison sex scandal. Miller appointed him to the paroles board.  Whitworth recently started drawing an annual pension of $104,400. State law terminates pension payments to any employee hired after July 1, 1985, who commits a felony related to his duties. Whitworth's service began in 1973, according to the state retirement system, so his pension would be unaffected if he were convicted.  In an interview in April 2002, Miller praised Whitworth for how he dealt with prison overcrowding during a budget-breaking recession.  "Bobby Whitworth had the knowledge and the ability that no one else had at that time to figure future prison space accurately," said Miller, now a U.S. senator. "He had a very good ability to figure exactly what you could do with the space you had. It helped me, it helped Georgia, and it helped the system over some very rough spots."  (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)  

June 14, 2002
The two most influential members of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles resigned Thursday as Gov. Roy Barnes appointed a special prosecutor to investigate them -- as well as Attorney General Thurbert Baker.   Barnes named Coweta County District Attorney Pete Skandalakis the special prosecutor whose job will be to untangle a budding -- and complicated -- election year scandal that includes allegations of trading influence for money.   Parole board Chairman Walter Ray and member Bobby Whitworth are under investigation for allegedly lobbying the Legislature on behalf of a private probation company that had paid them tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees.  Ray and Whitworth have acknowledged they were paid consultants for Detention Management Services, which supervises offenders sentenced to probation for misdemeanors.   Two years ago, the Legislature enacted a law shifting responsibility for managing misdemeanor offenders from the state to local governments, a step some said would help companies such as Detention Management Services. Ray and Whitworth deny they personally pressed legislators for the change.   Ray was appointed to the board by Gov. Zell Miller in 1996 and had been chairman since 1997. A former state trooper, Ray was a state senator for 12 years and had risen to president pro tem of the state Senate.   Whitworth, said to have the most influence on the board, was appointed in 1993 by Miller. Before that, he had been head of the state prison system.  (The Atlanta Journal)

June 14, 2002
The state's investigation of two top parole officials began last August following reports that a firm in the corrections business paid the men tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees.  Parole board member Bobby Whitworth and Chairman Walter Ray. Both men acknowledge they were paid nearly $100,000 between them as consultants to a private probation company, Detention Management Services. Whitworth said he received a lump-sum payment of $75,000, and Ray said he was paid $24,500 over a four-year period. Whitworth and Ray said they were paid to help Detention Management drum up business to supervise minor offenders sentenced to probation in city and county court systems around the state. They say they had no conflict of interest because DMS was working with probationers and not parolees. But, during the same period that the two men were working for DMS, lobbyists for the parole board were pushing a bill in the state Legislature that shifted responsibility for supervising all misdemeanor offenders in Georgia to those same city and county courts. The 2000 law reduced state probation officers' caseloads and created a windfall of business opportunities for DMS and other private probation companies. (The Atlanta Journal)

April 12, 2002
One day after a newspaper series reported allegations of corruption at Georgia's parole board, two Athens parole officers showed up at the home of James "Tommy" Morris with a "message" for the former board chairman. Morris, quoted in the articles as saying the board should be "cleaned up or abolished," was no longer welcome to stop by the parole office near his home outside Athens. The order had come down through a chain of command that started with top parole officials in Atlanta. "I guess it was just to show their displeasure with him," said David McCranie, chief of the Athens district parole office, who was ordered Tuesday to deliver the message. Morris, who retired in 1995, had served 22 years on the parole board and was elected chairman three times. He called the move "childish" and a "knee-jerk reaction by some emotional people." "It just gave me a feeling that they're sending a Scud missile out and they're directing it to me," he said. "They blame me for picking up where Lisa Thompson left off." Last summer, Thompson, a former member of the parole agency's inner circle, went to the governor with allegations of wrongdoing by board members Bobby Whitworth and Chairman Walter Ray. The five-member board decides which inmates can leave prison early. Thompson's allegations, which surfaced during an employee dispute, have led to an eight-month criminal investigation by the attorney general. Investigators are looking into whether Whitworth and Ray illegally influenced legislation for payment or broke the law when they accepted tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from private companies doing criminal justice business. Whitworth and Ray deny doing anything wrong. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

April 8, 2002
Eleven years ago, Gov. Zell Miller publicly berated Bobby Whitworth for hiring his son Chris to work in the Department of Corrections. "Nepotism should be stopped, and it should be stopped by department heads," Miller said in 1991, railing against "family trees" and threatening to fire anyone who hired relatives. Commissioner Whitworth promptly fired his boy. But with no laws against nepotism in Georgia and few other restrictions on hiring, Whitworth and other members of the Georgia parole board continue to dole out jobs and contracts to friends, relatives and legislators. Whitworth may have fired his son Chris a decade ago, but today his son Kenny earns more than $62,000 a year managing the unit that oversees parole's electronic monitoring program. Just as the Department of Corrections under Whitworth was called the "department of connections," the Board of Pardons and Paroles could become known as "pardons and payrolls." Among those on the board's payroll have been the House speaker's grandson, the son of a secretary for Gov. Roy Barnes, the daughter of the former House Rules Committee chairman, the wife of a state agency head, former parole board members, former legislators, a gospel singer and a wrestler. "It's a conflict of interest, pure and simple," said Emmet Bondurant, a prominent Atlanta attorney on the board of Common Cause of Georgia, a government watchdog group. "The public can never have confidence that contracts or jobs are being awarded on merit if they're going out to friends and relatives of those in the position to influence the decision-making process." In 1983, as lieutenant governor, Miller tried to pass an anti-nepotism law. But no such law exists today, nor does the state's merit system have guidelines prohibiting nepotism. Georgia is one of seven state governments without restrictions on nepotism, according to a study published in the State and Local Government Review. The hiring of friends and relatives is so ingrained in Georgia's political landscape that lawmakers have resisted change, Bondurant said. "It's hard to think there would be many states worse than here." (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

April 7, 2002
Charges of corruption and cronyism have enveloped Georgia's parole board. Critics accuse some board members of lining their pockets through private contracts and turning the agency into a political dumping ground. At the center of an eight-month criminal investigation is Bobby Whitworth, a member of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. He was also a commissioner of Georgia's Department of Corrections for four years. In 1993 Gov. Zell Miller forced him out of his corrections job over his handling of a prison sex scandal, then immediately appointed him to the five-member parole board. Also under investigation is Walter Ray, the parole board's current chairman. Although Ray holds the top title, Whitworth runs the board, observers say. Whitworth and Ray admit they accepted tens of thousands of dollars from Lanson Newsome, a former Corrections deputy commissioner and friend of Whitworth's who made millions in the sale of his private probation business. Investigators want to know whether the two board members were paid to influence passage of a law that would benefit Newsome's company. If they were, they could face up to five years in prison. Under the 2000 law, the state turned over supervision of thousands of misdemeanor probationers to private companies, creating a potential windfall for companies such as Newsome's Detention Management Services Inc. The attorney general and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also are looking into: Whitworth's contract with the Bobby Ross Group, a Texas-based private prison company that paid him more than $135,000 in consulting fees between 1996 and 2001. Whitworth also earns a state salary of $111,509 a year. A $26,000 contract awarded by the board to the wife of the lobbyist for the Bobby Ross Group. It was given to the wife's company while Whitworth was being paid consulting fees by the Bobby Ross Group. The contract was awarded with no competitive bids. Another part of the state's investigation has been devoted to unraveling a proposal championed by Whitworth and Ray to create a new agency that would combine probation and parole. The governor's chief of staff and others say the new agency is Whitworth's brainchild. Given the trend toward privatizing, a new superagency could be a gold mine for private companies able to secure contracts with the state. It all started to unravel with a woman scorned. Few couples in Georgia politics were as powerful and connected as Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Powder Springs) and his wife, Lisa Phillips Thompson. He's the governor's Senate floor leader and Barnes' childhood friend. She ascended to the parole board's inner circle as its legislative liaison for the last six years. Barnes was in their wedding. The Thompsons spent Christmas Eves with the first couple. Until last year. That's when Lisa Thompson went from golden girl to whistle-blower. She told her story to the governor, news reporters and ultimately the deputy attorney general. According to Bowers, her lawyer, Thompson believed she was being pushed out of her job because she and her husband were planning to divorce. She hired Bowers to fight for her job. "They were trying to capitalize on her relationship with a prominent legislator to do her duties as the legislative liaison for the board," Bowers says. But the employee dispute also prompted her to tell the governor and his staff of alleged wrongdoing at the parole board, stemming from lobbying work the year before. During the 2000 session, Thompson had lobbied hard for the private probation bill --- a top priority of Whitworth's and Ray's, she has said. The idea was to reduce state probation officers' caseloads by shifting supervision of misdemeanor offenders to private companies contracted by cities and counties. But probation is under the control of the Department of Corrections, not the parole board, so Thompson questioned why the board was pushing the bill with such determination. Tracy Masters, attorney for the parole board, says that in early 2000, Whitworth asked him to draft a bill to remove misdemeanor offenders from state probation and from prison beds. Whitworth told Masters to consult with a former Corrections staff member who was experienced in writing legislation. "I initiated the call because Bobby Whitworth had asked me to draft a bill to that extent," Masters says. Shortly afterward, Bowers says, Thompson learned Newsome had been paying Ray while she and other parole board staff had been lobbying for a bill that opened new markets to Newsome's company. In interviews last summer with WSB-TV and WAGA-TV, Ray admitted Newsome had paid him $11,000 over two years to drum up business for his probation company with local officials. Ray now says he received $24,500 over four years. Whitworth acknowledged he had received a lump sum of $75,000 from Newsome for the same services. Both argue there was no conflict because Newsome's business had nothing to do with parole. And they point to a 1997 law that made it legal for parole board members to hold outside jobs that don't conflict with their official duties. That law was Whitworth's idea. He says he pushed for it to protect board members and parole officers who held outside jobs. But he also says that by fall 1996, he had begun accepting $1,000-a-month payments from Newsome and $3,000 a month from the Bobby Ross Group --- months before the new law passed.   Personal relationships have always been the mainstay of Georgia politics. With no nepotism laws, friends or relatives often work in high places, courtesy of their father the legislator or their friend the governor. And because of weak ethics laws, doing business in Georgia often means steering lucrative state contracts to friends. After helping Orlando Martinez get appointed to run Juvenile Justice, Whitworth lobbied hard to get him to continue doing business with the Bobby Ross Group. At the time Martinez took over, the Bobby Ross Group had a sizable contract to run a juvenile detention facility in Ocilla. Martinez had decided to cancel it for a number of reasons. Whitworth was then a consultant for Bobby Ross. But whether or not Whitworth broke the law, his actions were unethical, says Robert Pastor, chairman of Common Cause of Georgia, a government watchdog group. And if they're not illegal, "the law should be changed," Pastor says. "That kind of activity is completely inappropriate, even if his private activities only indirectly related to his official role," Pastor says. Whitworth should have known better, says Morris, a board member for more than 22 years. "What's legal and what's right isn't always in concert," he says, "but . . .any logical human being would know that what he was doing was wrong." Both Whitworth and Ray say they cleared all their consulting contracts with their department's lawyer. Masters, director of legal services, says he discussed with them the types of arrangements that would be legal, but not specific contracts. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

September 5, 2001
An investigation into alleged improprieties at the state Board of Pardons and Paroles has expanded to include a review of a contract for testing services.  Officials are looking into whether the deal --- a one-year pilot program that was not extended --- benefited the wife of a business associate and friend of board member Bobby Whitworth.  Career Mappers Inc. sold the testing program to the parole board after Dotty Edwards of Spartanburg, S.C., introduced the company's executive to state officials, Browning said.  Edward's husband, former South Carolina state Rep. T.W. Edwards Jr., is registered to lobby the Georgia General Assembly for the Bobby Ross Group or BRG, a company that operates private prisons.  The company also has employed Whitworth as a consultant.  Whitworth's connections to BRG are under investigation by the attorney general's office and the Georgia Bureau of investigation.  Authorities are looking into $100,000 that Whitworth reportedly accepted from the firm for monitoring its privately run prisons in Texas.  The investigation also centers on payments that Whitworth and Walter Ray, parole board chairman, accepted from Detention Management Services, which had a contract to supervise people sentenced to probation for misdemeanors.  Whitworth has said he received $75,000 for three years of work for DMS; Ray said his fees totaled $11,000 for two years of work.  Both Whitworth and Ray have denied wrongdoing.  (The Atlanta Journal and Constitution)

July 26, 2001
Georgia's attorney general is looking into consulting contracts two state Pardons and Parole Board members had with private security companies to determine if there was a conflict of interest or ethics laws were broken, officials said Wednesday. Russell Willard, a spokesman for Attorney General Thurbert Baker, would not characterize the inquiry as an investigation. "There are a number of allegations out there and we are looking at those allegations," he said.  In a case that has prompted calls for stronger state ethics laws, Parole Board Chairman Walter Ray and board member Bobby Whitworth acknowledged this month that they had been paid consultants for the probation company Detention Management Services, which was sold last year to a firm with state contracts.  Ray, paid $11,000 over two years, and Whitworth, paid $75,000 for three years of work, said their job was to introduce DMS owner Lanson Newsome to local government officials in hopes they would hire the company to supervise misdemeanor offenders sentenced to probation. Criticism centered on allegations Ray and Whitworth pushed for a change in state law that could help companies like DMS. Last year, the Legislature shifted supervision of misdemeanor offenders on probation from the state to local governments. Ray and Whitworth said they never personally lobbied for the change --- though employees of their agency did. Parole Board lobbyists said the change would reduce the agency's supervisory caseload.  But critics noted the change would provide business for private security companies like DMS and the national firm that bought it, which were securing contracts with Georgia cities and counties that became responsible for incarcerating the prisoners.  (The Atlanta Journal and Constitution)

July 10, 2001
A state official admitted to receiving more than $200, 000 from two government contractors who do business in the criminal justice arena.  Bobby Whitworth, a member of Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles, told WSB-TV on Monday he was within the law when he was hired as a consultant by Detention Management Services and the Bobby Ross Group.  The board of Pardons and Paroles decides when to release certain offenders from confinement after they have served part of a prison sentence.  Whitworth said the company did no state business, but he acknowledged lobbying as a board member for a law that might have created more work for companies like DMS.  The Bobby Ross Group operates three juvenile facilities in Georgia.  The mission of the company is changing to a parole revocation center.  Walter Ray, the chair of the state board of Pardons and Paroles, acknowledged on WSB-TV Tuesday that he too, received money from the government contractors.  However, Jeff Davis, executive director of Georgia Common Cause, said he has a problem with it.  "When public officials accept money from private companies and then use their political power to lobby for action or legislation that ends up benefiting those companies - that raises the appearance of propriety," Davis said.  (AP)

Georgia Department of Corrections
December 1, 2005 Cedartown Standard
At a meeting with state Sen. Bill Heath and state Rep. Bill Cummings, county commissioners expressed concerns over proposed legislation that would expand the power of inverse condemnation. Commissioners also voiced their concerns over state funding for prisoners housed in county jails. A number of state prisoners are held in county jails while waiting transfer to state facilities. Currently, the state reimburses counties $20 per day per prisoner. Chairman Croker said that the state pays private prisons $45 per day per prisoner. He also said the cost per day for the county is more than the $20 reimbursed. He suggested the state increase reimbursement for the counties.

February 14, 2005 Macon Telegraph
The Georgia Department of Corrections plans to cut the number of its employees monitoring the state's three private prisons on site from three to one.  State prison officials said the move will be made in a couple of weeks to cut costs. They said experience with the prisons has led them to believe that monitoring levels can be safely cut. A single contract monitor, a mid-level managerial position, will monitor the three prisons in the future to ensure that sanitation, safety and security are up to state contract standards. Monitors' logs were compiled in a 2000 state report that documented a number of problems at the three prisons. Company officials at the time described the problems as routine startup difficulties.

September 6, 2003
A top Georgia prison executive resigned Friday after making disparaging remarks about another public safety official at a meeting of wardens.  James Doctor worked for the Department of Corrections for 29 years. As director of the department's facilities division, Doctor supervised about two-thirds of the department's employees, including all wardens and officers at the state's 39 prisons.  Bud Black, a member of the state Public Safety Board -- which oversees the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation -- said he was told Doctor made disparaging remarks about him Wednesday during a monthly meeting of the state's prison wardens.  Doctor acknowledged Thursday that he told the wardens he had no respect for Black, but he said he felt he had nothing to apologize for. Doctor could not be reached for comment Friday.  Joe Ferrero, acting commissioner of the Corrections Department, said he accepted Doctor's resignation Friday morning.  The resignation "stems from comments at a managers' meeting I find unacceptable for a senior manager of our department," Ferrero said.  Acting Assistant Commissioner Alan Adams has been placed in charge of the department's facilities division, Ferrero said.  Black said Friday that he thinks the department was right to accept Doctor's resignation. "You hate to see something like that happen," he said. "But I don't think they had any other choice."  Before Doctor convened the meeting with the wardens in Forsyth, Black, who once worked for the Corrections Department, went in to greet some of the people he had once worked with. After Black left, Doctor questioned Black's ethics and made other disparaging remarks about him, Black said.  After leaving Corrections, Black started a private probation company with Lanson Newsome, also a former Corrections executive.  Bobby Whitworth, as a member of the state parole board and former Corrections commissioner, has been indicted for allegedly taking money to influence legislation that would have been a major financial windfall for companies such as Newsome's and Black's Detention Management Services. Neither Newsome nor Black has been accused of wrongdoing.  (The Atlanta-Constitution)

Georgia Legislature
June 14, 2010 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As lawmakers returned from the coast last week, we picked up word of some serious, hand-to-hand competition between two lobbyists down at St. Simons Island. The occasion was the Georgia Chamber of Commerce’s annual summer retreat. We’re told by very reliable state Capitol sources that, last Tuesday night, a pair of lobbyists treated several lawmakers and clients in the drinking section of the Village Inn and Pub, famous for its wild orchid martinis. One lobbyist was stuck at a table with the clients. The other lobbyist landed the table with the legislators. When bill-paying time came, the lobbyist stuck at the children’s table refused to pay. Insults were exchanged, and the two lobbyists ended up rolling on the restaurant floor. The fight was broken up before law enforcement became formally involved. The two lobbyists: Graham Thompson, whose clients in the last session included the Georgia Association of Health Plans, Sprint, and Satellite Tracking of People, a Texas organization; and John Clayton, whose clients in the last session included several physician and emergency response groups, Imperial Sugar, and the Corrections Corporation of America. We’ve attempted to contact both gentlemen, and haven’t heard back. But we await their June disclosures, which should tell us who ultimately paid the bill. And who was there. Clayton, many in the state Capitol will recall, was identified by police as the victim in a fracas with a fellow lobbyist at a 2007 sine die party, also attended by many lawmakers. Clayton took a beer bottle to the right side of his head.

April 7, 2010 AP
In the 3 1/2 weeks following his selection as the Republican nominee for House speaker, David Ralston raked in $137,550 in campaign contributions — more than four times what he raised throughout all of 2009 combined. Campaign finance reports reviewed by The Associated Press on Wednesday show that donations to the speaker-in-waiting poured in from the health care, banking and insurance industries as well as Georgia business stalwarts like Coca-Cola, Delta and Aflac. Ralston ran for House speaker as a reformer, aiming to clean up the ethics mess at the state Capitol left by his predecessor Glenn Richardson, who stepped down after allegations of an affair with a lobbyist. Ralston pledged to keep lobbyists at arm's length. But a number of well-connected lobbyists and lobbying firms donated to the new speaker, including Massey and Bowers and Georgia Link, which has a long list of well-heeled corporate clients. The GOP caucus chose Ralston on Dec. 17. He was installed as speaker after a vote by the full House on Jan. 11, the first day of the legislative session. State officials and lawmakers are banned from raising campaign cash while the state Legislature is meeting so heavy-hitters at the state Capitol hurried to get their checks in before the deadline. In an interview, Ralston acknowledged that his bank account is fatter even without an announced challenger for his north Georgia legislative seat. But he said the contributions aren't influencing his decision-making and added many of the funds arrived unsolicited. "I really couldn't tell you many of the people who gave me contributions," Ralston said in an a telephone interview. "Frankly, I'm not focused on fundraising or politics, I really have been focused on what the General Assembly needs to get done. We've been here working on the budget this week." A number of the donations — $131,300 — came during the first 10 days of January. Ralston held a packed fundraiser in Atlanta on Jan. 7, just a few days before he was installed as speaker. The Blue Ridge Republican raised just $33,475 for all of 2009, according to campaign reports. Out-of-state companies with business in Georgia were on the roster of donors. Among them are Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America, an operator of private prisons in the state and Illinois-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

January 18, 2006 Savanna Morning News
The state should be able to remove all its prisoners from county jails within the next six months, Corrections Commissioner James Donald said Wednesday during the last day of budget hearings at the Capitol. It wasn't clear whether Donald's comments would defuse the issue of county jails housing a backlog of state prisoners, or even if he would be able to meet the goal. And Donald conceded that new measures, such as a proposal to toughen penalties on sexual predators, could complicate his plan. But Sen. Regina Thomas, a Savannah Democrat who has introduced a bill to raise the fees paid to counties, said Donald's plan wouldn't solve the current problem. "It's not going to happen tomorrow, and the counties are still suffering," she said. Thomas also blasted the governor's budget for including increases in the amount the state pays to private prisons to cover inflation. During Donald's presentation to members of a joint meeting of the House and Senate budget-writing committees, Thomas pointed out that the private prisons already receive larger payments than county jails even without the increases.

February 13, 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A year ago they would have made a formidable legislative caucus: the chairman of the House Budget Committee, the House majority leader, a floor leader for Gov. Sonny Perdue and two Senate committee chairmen. But weeks after leaving office, they're now on the lobbyist side of the velvet rope that separates lawmakers and the people paid to influence them at the Capitol. They represent cities, hospitals, gas companies, high-tech firms, bikers and pay-day loan businesses. The revolving door of ex-lawmakers immediately becoming lobbyists has long been criticized in Atlanta, as it has been in Washington, where former Georgia Sen. Zell Miller announced even before he left office that he was joining a law firm with extensive lobbying interests. But this year, with his fellow Republicans in charge of the Legislature, Perdue is convinced that the climate is finally right to require a cooling-off period for lawmakers wanting to become lobbyists. The governor is pushing an ethics bill that would make legislators wait at least a year before returning to the Capitol as lobbyists. Government watchdog groups such as Common Cause prefer two years. "The transition from legislator to lobbyist is just too cozy right now," said Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver of Decatur, who has authored several Democratic ethics-in-government bills this year. "To use your public service job to further your post-legislative opportunities for financial gain is not in the public's interest." The revolving door has been spinning for years, and it was no different after last November's elections. Former Sen. Dan Lee of LaGrange, who pushed Perdue's ethics package last year as his Senate floor leader, was invited to become a lobbyist about a month after losing his Republican primary race in July. Now Lee and the law firm he joined represent Corrections Corporation of America, which builds and leases prisons to government; the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians; Infrastructure Corporation of America, which maintains highways; Motorola; and MHM Services, which provides mental health services to Georgia prison inmates. "I personally don't see anything wrong with it," said Lee, who added that most of his law practice over the years has involved doing work for governments.

January 14, 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican revolution is sweeping the third-floor hallways of the state Capitol, where big-money lobbyists compete for the minds, hearts and ears of the General Assembly. With Republicans in power, more ex-lawmakers and staffers from that side of the aisle have signed up to peddle their clients' positions, to help pass or kill bills and to snag a piece of the state's $17 billion pie. This comes at a time when Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue is calling for a one-year waiting period before legislators can become lobbyists, and disclosure of how much special interests pay lobbyists. Perdue's former Senate floor leader, Dan Lee of LaGrange, lost his bid for re-election last year, but he won't be missing from the Capitol. He has returned as a lobbyist, joining Chuck McMullen, a former aide to Tom Price, the former majority leader newly elected to the U.S. House.In little time, McMullen said, his group has gone from zero to more than 20 clients, including Corrections Corporation of America, which builds and operates private prisons, Motorola, a major supplier of electronic equipment to governments, and several health care concerns.

January 7, 2004
Gov. Sonny Perdue is recommending that the Legislature, which convenes Monday, make substantial changes in the state's $16 billion budget for the current 2004 fiscal year that runs through June 30.  • $3.1 million cut in payments to private prisons.  (AJC.com)

April 14, 2003
A dispute over the price the state will pay for a 1,600-bed private prison in Stewart County led lawmakers Monday to delete $40 million in bonds that could be used to buy the facility.  The House-passed $16 billion budget approved by a 114-63 vote goes to the Senate without funding for the purchase of the prison near Lumpkin from Corrections Corp. of America.  "We just can't agree on a purchase price right now," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Buck, D-Columbus, told colleagues as he explained details of the proposed state budget for the year beginning July 1.  "The state thinks the price ought to be 'X,' and those that started construction think it ought to be 'Y,' " Buck said. "We're just going to have to take another look at that next year."  Corrections Corp. of America, a Nashville, Tenn.-based company, reports it has invested about $35 million in the prison. It stopped construction after the state announced it was no longer interested in using privately operated prisons to accommodate the burgeoning prison population.  (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer)

January 19, 2003
Gov. Sonny Perdue included $40 million in bond money in his budget to buy and complete a 1,524-bed private prison near Lumpkin in west Georgia.  The prison has lain dormant and unfinished since June2000 when the state told CCA of Nashville, Tenn., it was no longer interested in using a privately run prison facility.  A state assessment Dec. 2 estimated construction is only about 50 percent complete.  (AP)

May 11, 2002
Private companies that build speculative prisons gave $72,150 to Georgia lawmakers and political parties in 2000, a year before the state Legislature buried a proposal that would have put severe restrictions on the prison industry, a research group said in a new report.   Some of that money went to Middle Georgia lawmakers who defeated legislation in 2000 that would have barred private prisons in Georgia from accepting convicts from other states. At the time, McRae Correctional Facility, a new, private prison in Telfair County, was shopping for inmates.   The prison is still vacant and is seeking a federal contract to house criminal aliens, many of whom would be transported to Georgia from other states.   In 2000, private prison companies gave more than $1.2 million to the campaign funds of state lawmakers in 14 Southeastern states, according to the Institute on Money in State Politics, the Montana-based think tank that issued the report.   A large portion of those donations went to senior lawmakers who sat on committees with oversight of prisons.  The report also showed that private prison contributions given directly to Georgia lawmakers in 2000 increased 15 percent from 1998 - going from $48,000 to $56,650 two years later.  The $45 million, 1,500-bed McRae jail has sat vacant since its completion.  (The Macon Telegraph)