by David Reutter

Alabama prisoners live in “human warehouses” where “systemic indifference discrimination and dangerous – even life-threatening – conditions are the norm.” That factual finding was drawn in a 2014 report that followed an investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program (ADAP).

The 23 page report compiles the findings of SPLC and ADAP after they inspected Alabama’s 15 prisons, interviewed over 100 prisoners, and reviewed thousands of pages of medical records, depositions, media accounts, and the policies and contracts of the Alabama Department of Correction (ADOC) and two major contractors.

The result is “one inescapable conclusion,” that Alabama’s prisons violate federal law protecting people with disabilities and the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” The report’s three sections focus on the inadequacy of medical staff that leads to treatment delays, the systematic failure in mental health care, and the violation of the rights of prisoners with disabilities.

As of March 2014, ADOC held 25,055 prisoners. “Yet, there are only 15.2 doctors and 12.4 dentists for this city behind bars,” states the report. “A doctor’s average caseload is 1,648 patients and a dentist’s is more than 2,000.” Corizon, ADOC’s medical contractor provides ...

by David Reutter

Alabama paid $20.8 million in overtime to guards for staffing of its prisons in calendar year 2013. That is an increase of an average of $13 million over the previous for years.

From 2000 to 2012, Alabama’s prison budget swelled from $173.5 million to $373.5 million. Despite that increase, prisons remain understaffed as a result of attempts to cut budgets. A hiring freeze has hampered efforts to increase the number of guards in the work pool.

According to Kristi Gates, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), a minimum of 2,350 to 2,400 guards are required to staff ADOC’s prisons. For the fiscal year ended in September, ADOC averaged only 2,150 guards in is workforce.

The shortage has forced ADOC to offer overtime to guards who volunteer to fill empty slots. That has created a windfall of earnings for some guards.

Irvin Harris, a guard at Kilby Correctional Facility, was ADOC top earner from 2009 to 2013, earning $492,752.08 over that period. Close behind were guards Lercy Jamison, Jr., ($461,964.59) and Samuel E, Johnson, III ($406,085.47). Over that five year period, at least 20 ADOC guards earned more than $325,000.

Of Harris’ earning, $245,997 was ...

by David Reutter

Privatization has been all the rage in Florida’s prison system for some time. By 2003, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC), had contracts with private companies to operate its canteen, food service, and telephone operations. By then it also had several privately run prisons in its system.

PLN has chronicled incidents over the years to show that privatization is the fruit of political clout and often involve kickbacks that result in corruption. [See: PLN, Jan. 2006, p. 20; Mar. 2011, p. 1]. The problem is not confined to Florida, as the citizens of Mississippi learned after their corrections commissioner was recently indicted. [See: PLN, Oct. 2015, p. 42].

Gov. Rick Scott campaigned on cutting the FDOC’s budget, and one of his first acts in office was to pen contracts to privatize the entire prison system and its medical care. Due to a statutory provision, the move to privatize prisons was blocked by a court and failed in the next legislative session. The move to privatize prisoner medical care, however, moved forward.

Anyone who makes even a cursory investigation into prison privatization can easily conclude that it is tainted with corruption and poor-services from profit-mongering companies ...

by David Reutter

More than two years after prisoners Darren Rainey’s dead body was removed from the shower in the mental health unit at Florida’s Dade Correctional Institution (DCI), no official cause of death has been ruled and the case sits dormant in law enforcement files.

Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner, was moved at 7:38 P.M. on June 23, 2012, from his cell to the shower as punishment for defecating in his cell and refusing to clean it up. The escorting guard, Roland Clark, locked Rainey into the shower.

According to grievances obtained by The Miami Herald through public records requests, prisoner Harold Hampstead reported witnessing Rainey’s death. He said he was subject to a searing hot shower for the duration of the time in shower, and that other prisoners had been subject to scalding hot showers as punishment. “I can’t take it no more, I’m sorry. I won’t do that again,” Hampstead wrote he heard Rainey scream over and over. “I then seen [sic] his burnt dead body go about two feet from my cell door on a stretcher.”

Hampstead wrote that he and other prisoners heard Rainey start screaming at about 8:55. That continued for about 30 minutes ...

by David Reutter

Private prison operator Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) recently made a statement to Mother Jones magazine in response to the discovery of reporter who had been employed at one of its prisons in Louisiana. The operation was uncovered when a reporter was arrested after being spotted outside the perimeter of Winn Correctional Facility.

Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan’s office was called at approximately 9:30pm on March 13, 2015, by guards at the CCA-operated prison. The guards had spotted someone on prison grounds via a light from a cellphone. The person left in a rental car when guards tried to stop him.

The car was tracked to Mother Jones senior producer James West. Monica Bauerlein, co-editor of Mother Jones, issued the following statement, “James West was stopped by police while doing newsgathering in a public place and arrested when he refused to show the contents of his camera.” Jordan said West did not carry media credentials and had a camera-equipped drone with him.

Then, on March 17, a guard resigned his position at the prison after being a no-show for two days. The guard, who had been employed at the prison since December, was Shane Bauer, a senior ...

by David M. Reutter

Between 2012 and 2014, at least 14 Pennsylvania jail and prison guards were arrested. Most of the arrests stem from corrupt acts while on duty, and the seriousness of the acts ranger from tawdry to downright predatory and reprehensible.

Contraband has always been an issue for houses of incarceration. Guards who bring contraband items have varying motives to violate policy to smuggle it for prisoners.

According to Chester County Prison guard John W. Feister, pity led him to bring a cellphone to pretrial detainee Travis S. McNeal. “He felt sorry for (McNeal), so he gave him a cell phone,” said Feister’s attorney Edward Gallen.

Feister was from out-of-state and said he could not afford to make collect calls to his family. Jail officials received an anonymous call advising that a detainee had been seen on a cell phone. After the phone and its charger were found in McNeal’s cell, he showed his gratitude by telling officials that Feister, who had been terminated a month earlier for being absent from his post, brought him the phone. Feister pleaded guilty to giving a telecommunications devise to an inmate and received a three to 12 month prison sentence.

Chester ...

by David M. Reutter

Cost overruns of $91 million pushed Michigan’s Wayne County to end development of its partially finished new 2,000- bed jail.

Wayne County Commissioners decided in 2010 to build a new jail. Its contract with AECOM Services of Michigan, Inc. provided costs of the project would remain under $220 million. In December 2010, the County issued $200 million in bonds to pay for the jail. The Commission approved the sale of up to $300 million.

Following the August 2013 decision to end the jail project, the County sued AECOM. It alleged a failed design and construct led to the cost increase, that AECOM failed to “perform their contractual obligations in a timely manner and without errors and omissions,” and it proceeded without County approval on “design and construction activities” that “increased the projects construction costs by almost $50 million.”

Because the County “had no ability to exceed the $220 million in initial construction costs,” it was forced to “terminate the project.” When construction was halted, the County had already spent $154 million on the project. The lawsuit seeks to recover those loses.

In the wake of the decision to end construction, the County was left with a ...

by David M. Reutter

Almost 35 years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed “debtors’ prisons” – in which defendants are threatened with jail if they fail to pay fees and fines – courts continue to struggle to follow the ruling. The recent troubles of an Alabama judge demonstrate that ongoing struggle.

According to an October 2015 complaint filed by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission against Circuit Court Judge Marvin Wayne Wiggins, poor defendants in his courtroom were given a stark choice: Donate blood or go to jail.

In a recording made by one defendant, Wiggins spoke from the bench about a blood drive underway outside the courthouse and added, “... if you do not have any money and you don’t want to go to jail, as an option to pay it, you can give blood today ... or the sheriff has enough handcuffs for those who do not have money.”

Of the 47 defendants who gave blood outside the courthouse that day, only six were not from Wiggins’ court.

 “Judge Wiggins’ conduct regarding the incarceration of criminal defendants and his conduct in threatening to incarcerate those defendants who do not have ‘any money’ unless they gave blood were so coercive ...

by David M. Reutter

Despite a 2008 change in state law intended to make it easier for Pennsylvania prisoners to be granted compassionate release, it is still rare for such releases to be granted.

In 1971, shortly after turning 18, Leon Jesse James was involved in a fatal shooting and sentenced to life without parole (LWOP). Such sentences effectively impose a living death penalty. Advocates of LWOP call it justice for victims, while critics assert that life without parole sentences are overbearing and result in unnecessary punishment that imposes substantial costs on taxpayers when prisoners grow old behind bars. It costs an estimated $872,036 to incarcerate each Pennsylvania lifer over their lifetime – an average of 23.4 years.

Lawmakers revised the state’s compassionate release law, 42 Pa. C.S. § 9777, almost a decade ago as part of a broader criminal justice bill. Julie Hall, a criminologist and gerontologist at Drexel University, believes the change actually made compassionate release more difficult.

The law currently allows prisoners to be released to an outside hospital or nursing facility if their petition is granted by a judge who considers strict criteria; a prisoner must show that he or she is seriously ill and expected ...

by David M. Reutter

Faced with the death of yet another prisoner – one of 346 in 2014 alone – Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) officials have refused to release video surveillance of the prisoner’s cell, citing security concerns. The Miami Herald has sued for the video’s release.

Questions surround the circumstances of the June 2014 death of prisoner Steven Michael Zerbe, 37, at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution – one of the state’s toughest and most punitive facilities. Zerbe, who was legally deaf and blind, told his mother and prison officials that in the eight months he was held by the FDOC he had been beaten, raped and knifed. When transported to a hospital in Pensacola six days before he died, Zerbe – who was serving a 15-year sentence for aggravated battery – was suffering from respiratory failure, acute liver failure and pneumonia.

In the nearly three years since his death, Zerbe’s mother, Bonnie Zerbe, has tried to obtain answers as to how and why he died. Medical Examiner Andrea Minyard, who initially did not want to perform an autopsy until pressured by Bonnie, concluded that Zerbe’s death was due to complications of lymphoma. Yet he was never diagnosed with ...