By David M. Reutter
With the expansion of the prison industrialization complex in recent decades, many communities have turned to prisons as a means to generate economic activity.
Considering the success of other small, rural areas in this endeavor, it comes as no surprise that the citizens of Hardin, Montana ...
By David M. Reutter
In September 2008, The Washington State Department of Corrections (WDOC) began requiring its most violent sex offenders to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet for the first 30 days after release from prison. The new program is an expansion of a test program that was used on ...
by David M. Reutter
Despite the closed environment and high security features of prisons, prison officials continue to lose the battle against drugs and other contraband smuggling. The results of interdiction efforts are often the same as those in America’s decades-old “war on drugs” – a few skirmishes are won ...
By David M. Reutter
Georgia’s Fulton County has agreed to pay the widow of slain judge Rowland Barnes $5.2 million. Barnes was killed by Brian Nichols, who went on a killing rampage in March 2005 at the Fulton County Courthouse.
Nichols, who was on trial for rape in Barnes’ courtroom, ...
By David M. Reutter
The Michigan Department of Corrections’ (MDOC) efforts to comply with the requirement to deliver medical services are not effective. That is the conclusion drawn in an audit report issued in March 2008 by Michigan’s Office of the Auditor General. That conclusion comes as no surprise to ...
by David M. Reutter
The Idaho State Board of Medicine’s Prelitigation Screening Panel found that a prisoner at the CCA-operated Idaho Correctional Center had “borne his burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that Dr. [Stephen] Garrett did not comply with the standard of care in failing to ...
On March 3, 2011, American Service Group, Inc. (ASG) and Valitás Health Services, Inc. (VHS) announced a planned merger of the two companies that would create the largest contractor for healthcare services in prisons and jails in the United States.
Under the deal, VHS will acquire ASG for $26 per ...
by David M. Reutter
Prisoners at California’s Kern Valley State Prison in Delano are being slowly poisoned through their drinking water. The “state of the art” facility opened at a cost of $379 million in 2005; the water problem was discovered within weeks of the prison’s opening, but years later ...
by David M. Reutter
A “clean hands” provision in a Florida law designed to compensate wrongfully convicted prisoners is preventing most of those prisoners from receiving compensation. Of 13 men cleared by DNA evidence in Florida, only one has qualified for compensation while two eventually received payments through legislative claim ...
by David M. Reutter
The foray by Ohio Penal Industries (OPI), a branch of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, into manufacturing toilet paper has turned out to be a crappy deal for taxpayers.
OPI creates a wide variety of products at 24 manufacturing sites in 16 prisons. The ...
