Tragic photos capturing the horrific realities of many of the world’s refugee populations have been making the rounds recently. And while I choose my words carefully here—refugees are not the same as migrants—it all relates back to the way we treat those seeking out better opportunities for themselves and their loved ones. The reasons behind
By Andra Ghent America spends a lot of money locking up a lot of people. Understandably, legislators are trying to find ways of cutting prison costs without increasing crime rates. One tactic legislators increasingly rely on to manage costs is private prisons. Research from the Sentencing Project shows that, between 1999 and 2010, the share
On February 18, 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granted a request filed by for-profit prison company GEO Group to exclude a shareholder resolution that sought to reduce the high cost of phone calls made by prisoners at GEO-operated facilities. Ten days later, the SEC granted a request by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
By Prison Legal News Shrinking state budgets across the country is leading to prison closures that, in turn, have a negative impact on communities that depend on the facilities as a source of jobs and revenue. [See: PLN, June 2013, p.1; April 2009, p.1]. Small towns in Kentucky, Georgia, and New York are among those
On May 23, 2014, the Medical Examiner’s Office in Nashville completed an autopsy report on Tennessee state prisoner Jeffery Sills, 43, who was murdered at the South Central Correctional Facility in Clifton, Wayne County on March 28. The facility is operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison company.
Sills’ death was classified as a homicide caused by “blunt and sharp force injuries.” He was allegedly beaten and stabbed to death by his cellmate, Travis Bess, who was later transferred to the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
Jeffery Sills was at least the second prisoner murdered at the CCA-run prison since September 1, 2013, when Gerald Ewing, 28, was killed during a series of fights at the facility. Comparably, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction there were no homicides at state-run prisons in calendar year 2013 and to date this year.
Jeffery Sills’ death was particularly brutal, according to the autopsy report. He suffered lacerations, abrasions and contusions to his head and neck, fractured cheek and nasal bones, cutting and stab/puncture wounds, and hemorrhages in the “posterior cervical spinal muscles” and “skeletal muscle of back and intercostal muscles of posterior thorax.”
By Prison Legal News
Autumn Miller, the mother of the deceased baby, who was named Gracie, filed a federal lawsuit against CCA on March 8, 2013. See: Miller v. CCA, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Tex.), Case No. 3:13-cv-01022-L.
According to an investigative report by CBS 11, at least eight prisoners have died at the Dawson State Jail since 2004. One of those deaths involved diabetic prisoner Pam D. Weatherby, 45. An internal CCA document indicated that jail staff “did not follow proper procedures, in that they did not call a medical professional and advise them of the offender vomiting, prior to the medical staff arriving” at the facility. Weatherby died in July 2011; she was serving one year for drug possession. Her family has since filed a wrongful death suit against CCA. See: Alfano v. CCA, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Texas), Case No. 3:11-cv-01006-P.
“Private prisons siphon public taxpayer dollars into corporate profit,” noted PLN managing editor Alex Friedmann. “They slash [medical] services to funnel money to their shareholders and executives, and people die. Even when we don’t need these for-profit prisons, they are rarely shuttered until the scandals reach critical mass.”
“Prisons and jails operated by CCA and other profit-making corporations have been responsible for dozens of scandals around Texas,” added Bob Libal, director of Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit organization that opposes prison privatization. “In the last ten years alone, there have been instances of medical neglect, sexual abuse and preventable suicide in private facilities in Austin, Bartlett, Beaumont, Big Spring, Bronte, Dallas, Del Rio, Eden, Encinal, Falfurrias, Fort Worth, Henderson, Liberty, Littlefield, Pearsall, Pecos, Raymondville, Spur, Taylor, Texarkana and Waco.”
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