|
Ellsworth
Correctional Facility
Apr
28, 2019 kansas.com
Kansas: Corizon short staffing and shorting meds
Locked in solitary confinement in a prison in rural Kansas without his
schizophrenia medication, Anthony Downing says he grew paranoid, fearing the
guards were poisoning his food. When he could take it no longer, he started
launching himself off the metal frame of his bed, kicking at the windows in
his cell again and again until men in protective gear came in and dragged him
out. “I broke the windows,” Downing said, “and they told me I was getting
transferred and I was like, ‘Thank God.” Downing, now out of prison, was
serving time at Ellsworth Correctional Facility, a small institution in
central Kansas. It’s one of several mostly rural facilities where the state’s
health care contractor, Corizon Health, has fallen well short of the
contract’s requirements for staffing key mental health positions, according
to documents The Star obtained through an open records request. The
documents, which covered Corizon’s performance from July 2015 through
December 2018, showed that almost 20 percent of the 10,000 inmates across the
state prison system were on psychotropic medications during that time. But
prisons in Ellsworth, Norton, Winfield and Hutchinson went months at a time
without Corizon reporting any hours worked there by psychiatrists, the
medical providers most qualified to prescribe and calibrate those
medications. Some of the other prisons during that time reported some
psychiatrist hours but not the amount the contract called for. “That’s pretty
shocking,” said Eric Balaban, an attorney with the ACLU’s national prison
project. “How were they renewing meds for prisoners who were there?” Corizon
spokeswoman Eve Hutcherson said the documents provided to The Star didn’t
accurately reflect actual distribution of staff within the prisons. The company moved its psychiatrists around
from one facility to another, she said, and their hours may have been
reported for their home base rather than the places they actually
worked. “To suggest that any of
these facilities had no coverage whatsoever is just plain inaccurate,”
Hutcherson said via email. She said the company’s behavioral health
professionals also used tele-psychiatry, which is conference calls or
video-conferencing for therapy sessions between doctors and patients who
aren’t in the same place. Confidential patient care records show psychiatry
hours being provided at prisons where the Department of Corrections staffing
documents show none, she said. But there’s other evidence that the company
was well short of staff, particularly in mental health, throughout the prison
system as a whole. From July 2015 through December
2018 the state levied nearly $6.5 million in under-staffing penalties against
Corizon, and a significant chunk of it was for psychiatry shortages. During a
legislative hearing last year, Viola Riggin, who
leads a team at the University of Kansas Medical Center that evaluates
Corizon’s performance, told legislators the team flagged psychiatrist
staffing in western Kansas as a problem area. “We worked with Corizon, called
them in and said you need to work in this specific area to get staff and they
sent a recruiter to work on that and it’s been mitigated,” Riggin said. But the records obtained by The Star show
psychiatrist shortages persisting at Winfield and Ellsworth — and extending
to the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex in Topeka — throughout 2018. And
a Department of Corrections audit presented to legislators in February showed
Corizon job vacancy rates of up to 18% in the Kansas prisons, with nurses and
mental health professionals making up about half the openings. Jeanny Sharp, a spokeswoman for the corrections
department’s new leadership under Gov. Laura Kelly, said in a March email
that staffing continues to be an area of emphasis. “Our medical team is
attempting to reach out to colleges to recruit more medical providers,” Sharp
said. “However, medical care in a corrections environment isn’t something
being taught in medical school, (and there are) clearly a few more barriers
to recruitment efforts.” Joel Dvoskin, a clinical
and forensic psychologist who co-wrote a 256-page handbook on mental health
care in prisons, said the psychiatrist shortages didn’t surprise him.
“Everybody in the U.S., correctional and otherwise, is having trouble
recruiting psychiatrists,” Dvoskin said. “There
simply aren’t enough psychiatrists in the U.S. … It’s not OK. I’m not saying
it as an excuse or that it’s acceptable, but I sure understand why they’re
having so much trouble.” Dvoskin also said private
companies like Corizon should have an edge in recruiting psychiatrists
because they aren’t constrained by state employee pay scales. Dvoskin said the national psychiatrist shortage is
particularly acute in rural areas, in part because states are competing with
VA medical centers, which have raised their psychiatrist salaries and gone on
a hiring binge in recent years. He said at one point California was offering
$300,000 salaries to get more psychiatrists into its prisons (in Kansas the
average psychiatrist salary is more like $200,000). The staffing documents
obtained by The Star show that at Ellsworth, Norton and Hutchinson, Corizon
filled in some of the vacant psychiatrist hours with psychiatric advanced
registered nurse practitioners. Dvoskin said that’s
a common solution, but not as desirable as having full-fledged psychiatrists.
“You can’t have all your hours filled by nurse practitioners, but you can
have some of them,” Dvoskin said. Winfield didn’t
report any hours worked by psychiatric advanced registered nurse practitioners.
It’s possible that primary care doctors were prescribing psychotropic
medications there, but Balaban said that wouldn’t be ideal. “For a short
period of time, in a pinch, you could have a physician do that, but that’s
pretty poor mental health treatment,” Balaban said. “On the streets you
wouldn’t go to your family physician for psychotropic meds.” Downing’s
experience shows what can happen when those meds aren’t delivered. Downing
said his mental illness was known when he entered Ellsworth and had actually factored into getting his sentence reduced. But
he said he never got his medications when he was there. “They didn’t do
anything at all,” Downing said. “I told them I need my meds and they said I
didn’t need them, or have a problem or whatever. … I
tried to tell them if I had my medication I would do
a lot better but they wouldn’t listen to me.” Instead he acted out and ended
up in “the hole,” which only made things worse. “In solitary it’s like being
in hell,” Downing said. “I had all kinds of visions of people trying to kill
me. I wouldn’t eat. I didn’t eat for several days cause every time I took a bite I would get physically sick.” His condition spiraled
quickly until the day he tried to kick out the window. Then he was
transferred to a dedicated mental health unit at the Lansing Correctional
Facility, one of the biggest prisons in the state. It was like night and day,
he said. “Corizon in Lansing is totally different,” Downing said. “It’s
totally different than in Ellsworth.” “They really should do something about
the psych part of Ellsworth,” Downing said. “The people that are still there,
I feel sorry for them.”
Forbes Juvenile Attention Facility
Topeka, Kansas
Clarence Kelley Juvenile Justice Resources
October 18, 2009 Topeka Capital-Journal
Insufficient staff numbers and inadequate room checks by a Topeka juvenile
residential center opened the door for a 12-year-old boy to be repeatedly
raped by his roommate over three days in January 2008, a civil lawsuit
claims. "The rape, sodomy, sexual assault and sexual battery could not
have happened if the boys or men were properly supervised," reads the
suit. The suit, filed last year in Shawnee County District Court against the
owners of Forbes Juvenile Attention Facility, isn't the only place to find
concerns about the welfare of residents of the facility. Other issues related
to the treatment of residents have been raised in inspection reports,
internal memos and the words of former FJAC workers. Allegations of racial
discrimination and questions about how FJAC administrators notify authorities
of alleged abuse also have been raised. The problems, former staffers say,
allowed sexual misconduct to go unnoticed. "The last couple months
before I left, it was chaos," said Clarence Tyson, a shift supervisor
who resigned in late 2008 after seven years at FJAC. The allegations are just
that -- allegations, the FJAC administration said. Terry Campbell, executive
vice president for Clarence M. Kelley Juvenile Justice Resources, which owns
FJAC, said a handful of unhappy workers have already made similar claims to
other governmental agencies. "I'm sure SRS has received them, KDHE has
received them, JJA has received them, the governor has probably received
them," Campbell said. "It's because we've got disgruntled staff,
former employees. They're not the majority of the professional staff that we
have." Campbell said there have been only six reports of sexual
misconduct at FJAC since 2007, and only two were sexual assaults. FJAC,
located at Forbes Field at 6700 S.W. Topeka Blvd., is a privately run youth
residential center, a nonsecure group home for male juvenile offenders that
houses up to 56 youths ages 12 to 17. The offenders sent to FJAC aren't the
most dangerous in the juvenile system, thus one reason why it isn't a locked
facility. Since a new administration took over at FJAC in late 2007, the
Kansas Department of Health and Environment has investigated 20 complaints
there. That is more than any of the 29 similar facilities contracting with
the state except for one -- Camelot Lakeside in Goddard, which has had 26
such complaints. Many of the complaints against FJAC allege insufficient
staffing led to the incidents. And at least six workers -- five former and
one current -- have filed state or federal discrimination suits in 2009. In
addition to alleging black workers were treated differently, some of the
suits say employees feared retaliation for reporting alleged abuse to
authorities as required by regulations and law. Campbell points out most
allegations by the former employees and allegations investigated by KDHE
couldn't be substantiated. Ward Loyd, chairman of
the Kansas Advisory Group on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention,
said he hadn't heard of the allegations but said "where's there's smoke,
there's usually fire." "It's certainly unfortunate to hear that
we've got these types of allegations with any Kansas facility," he said.
"The whole issue with having them placed in these kinds of facilities is
to provide for their needs, not to complicate them." Civil suit -The
12-year-old plaintiff in the current civil suit against FJAC was referred to
the facility in late 2007 or early 2008 by case manager Kenyetta Byrd. Soon
after, an FJAC worker contacted Byrd concerned about the boy's small size.
According to a February 2008 report by the Juvenile Justice Authority's
inspector general on the incident, the caller told Byrd the boy would be
"eaten alive." "They didn't even have clothes small enough to
fit him," said Toni Wash, a drug and alcohol counselor who worked at
FJAC from late 2007 to late 2008. "Everyone was asking why he was
there." Campbell said he wouldn't comment on any incident under
litigation. In addition to the civil case against Kelley Juvenile Detention
Services, the roommate suspected of raping the 12-year-old is facing criminal
sodomy charges in juvenile court. Immediately after Byrd got the alarming
call from the FJAC worker, another case coordinator called and told her to
disregard the previous caller. The boy was then placed at FJAC. The alleged
rape and sodomy occurred from Jan. 22 to Jan. 24, 2008, and as soon as FJAC
learned about it, officials there contacted authorities. The lawsuit claims
FJAC workers didn't conduct room checks every 15 minutes as their policy
mandated. The inspector general's report says room-check logs contained
blanket statements about the whole floor without specific mention of
individual room checks. In an e-mail to Campbell on Feb. 14, 2008, Kelley
administrator Scott Henricks conceded some fault. "The cause of the
alleged incident can partially be attributed to staff error," he wrote.
In its court response, however, FJAC flatly denied the allegations of
improper staff work. JJA commissioner Russ Jennings said:,
"Is there a concern that staff aren't checking rooms regularly? Yes,
there certainly is." Mona Brown, a floor staffer for more than a year
until she was fired in January, said she wasn't surprised something happened.
"The staff ratio just wasn't there," she said. "That is the
thing that sets it up for things to happen."
Grossman
Center
Leavenworth, Kansas
Jun 19, 2020 globenewswire.com
SHAREHOLDER
ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Investigates Claims On Behalf of Investors of The
GEO Group, Inc. -
NEW YORK, June 18, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating
claims on behalf of investors of The GEO Group, Inc. (“GEO Group” or the
“Company”) (NYSE: GEO). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S.
Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529,
ext. 7980. The investigation concerns whether GEO Group and certain of its
officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful
business practices. On June 17, 2020, The Intercept published an article
entitled “GEO Group’s Blundering Response to the Pandemic Helped Spread
Coronavirus in Halfway Houses.” The article reported details of a
significant COVID-19 outbreak at the Grossman Center, a halfway house in
Leavenworth, Kansas operated by GEO Group—which “was for weeks the hardest
hit federal halfway house in the country” in terms of confirmed cases of
COVID-19. Citing interviews with residents of the Grossman Center, The
Intercept characterized GEO Group’s response as “blundering” and reported,
“that the virus spread not in spite of the facility’s efforts to contain it,
but because of it.” According to the article, the Grossman Center
continued to keep its residents in overcrowded conditions without enforcing
personal protective measures even as COVID-19 diagnoses at the facility
increased. On this news, GEO Group’s
stock price fell $1.03 per share, or 7.8%, to close at $12.17 per share on
June 17, 2020. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles, and Paris is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas
of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late
Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the
Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more
than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he
established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud,
breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered
numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com
Hutchinson Correctional Facility
Hutchinson, Kansas
Corizon
Oct
21, 2017 thestar.com
Private Kansas prison did nothing as fungus destroyed inmate’s brain,
lawsuit alleges
KANSAS CITY, MO.—A Kansas prison inmate died in April after a brain
fungus gave him a form of meningitis that left him weak and so disoriented
that he drank his own urine while prison health care staff ignored his pleas
for help, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of his mother and daughter.
Marques Davis complained for months about symptoms at the Hutchinson
Correctional Facility, his attorney, Leland Dempsey, said in the lawsuit
filed this week in federal court, The Kansas City Star reported. “It feels
like something is eating my brain,” Davis told Corizon Health employees who
staffed the prison infirmary in December 2016, according to the lawsuit. It
names as defendants Corizon, a private prison health care company contracted
to provide health care at the state’s prisons, as well as 14 Corizon
employees, three doctors and 11 nurses. “No amount of money in the world
could ever replace my child, but somebody needs to be held accountable and
this (needs to not) happen to anybody else,” said Davis’ mother, Shermaine Walker, of Wichita. Corizon spokesperson Martha
Harbin said privacy laws prohibit the company from discussing details of
Davis’ care but “we expect any legal proceedings to reveal Mr. Davis’ care was
appropriate.” At the time of his death, Davis had spent eight years in prison
for several crimes, including attempted murder, his mother said. The lawsuit
alleges that Corizon didn’t help Davis until April 12, when he was taken to
Hutchinson Regional Medical Center after he suffered a heart attack. He was
declared brain dead and taken off life support the next day. An autopsy found
the cause of death was advanced granulomatous meningoencephalitis, a form of
meningitis that Dempsey said was caused by the Candida Albicans fungus.
Walker said she visited her son regularly at prison and tried unsuccessfully
several times to get Corizon to help him. “This was an everyday thing for me,
calling over there telling them about things he’s complaining to me about but
also the things I’m seeing,” Walker said. “He’s losing weight tremendously,
he’s sweating, his skin colour is changing.” The
lawsuit alleges that Corizon staff reported several times they thought Davis
was faking his illness. A Kansas Department of Corrections website lists more
than 40 disciplinary infractions for Davis while he was in prison, most of
them before he got sick. An infirmary report from the week before Davis’
death faults him for refusing food and failing to get out of bed to use the
toilet. Instead, he urinated in his water pitcher, which he then drank out of
“time and again.”
December 9, 2006 Hutchinson News
A former Aramark Services employee who worked inside the Hutchinson
Correctional Facility was sentenced to one year, three months in prison
Friday for trying to bring methamphetamine inside the prison. Joseph L. Delancy of South Hutchinson pleaded guilty to trafficking
in contraband in a correctional facility, possession of methamphetamine with
intent to sell and unlawfully arranging a drug sale by a commercial device.
He faced up to four years, 11 months in prison. Delancy's
attorney, Kerry Granger, asked for a lesser sentence and cited his client's
drug use starting as "a misguided attempt to deal with the death of his
son."
June 24, 2006 Hutchinson News
Drug detectives arrested a South Hutchinson man employed in the
Hutchinson Correctional Facility dining hall for allegedly purchasing drugs
he planned to sell to prison inmates. Joseph Lamont Delancy,
33, worked for Aramark Services, which provides food service for part of the
prison. According to police reports, Delancy made
phone contact with a drug enforcement detective about buying an ounce of
"Ice" methamphetamine. The detective set up the drop, and Delancy allegedly arrived and accepted the drugs from the
detective. The report indicates Delancy said he
planned to sell the drugs in the correctional institute and attempted to set
up another buy with the detective. Delancy is being
held on $25,000 bond on suspicion for possession of meth with the intent to
sell, a drug tax stamp violation and unlawfully arranging a sale by a
commercial service.
Johnson County Jail
Johnson County, Kansas
CCA
June 6, 2007 KC Community News
Legal hurdles and Johnson County Sheriff Frank Denning's opposition surfaced
in a Johnson County Commission discussion May 31 of private jails. Denning
said he opposed private jails on principle. “I am opposed to any private
organization imprisoning people,” Denning said. “I believe the best
institutions are ones with government oversight and government transparency.”
Denning also said a state statute prohibits him from using private jails for
state inmates. The statute would have to be amended to allow him to house
inmates in a private jail, he said. Commissioner John Segale
disputed the sheriff's opinion. County Chief Counsel Don Jarrett said the
county could contract with a private jail. “The county has the authority to
contract or use jail space in public and private facilities,” Jarrett said.
“The sheriff does not have to agree to the contract. The sheriff is in charge
of designating where prisoners go. So you can buy space, but if the sheriff
doesn't choose to put people in that space, you're going to have empty
spaces.” The discussion followed a pitch by Corrections Corp. of America,
Nashville, Tenn., one of the country's biggest private jailers, for county
business. The county paid about $6 million in 2006 to farm out more than 300
inmates daily to county jails as far away as Ottawa. The Gardner jail's
416-bed expansion is expected to be full upon opening in late 2009.
Commissioner Ed Peterson said he invited CCA so commissioners could learn
what a private jail offered. Ray Hodge, CCA senior director of business
development, told commissioners of plans to expand the company's maximum
security 802-bed Leavenworth Detention Center by another 320 beds. CCA
anticipates more beds would be required in the next few years and plans to
build another jail in Leavenworth County, Hodge said. If CCA secured
sufficient contracts from customers, including Johnson County, the company
would expedite construction of the jail. Federal, state and county
governments have contracts with CCA's 64 accredited jails, Hodge said. The
company has a 52 percent share of the national private jail market, he said.
Contract renewal rates are 95 percent. Hodge listed benefits for the county
from using CCA: capital meant for jail construction could be freed up for
other needs; first rights to beds; inmate consolidation in one nearby jail,
making access easier for families; transportation cost savings; and
insulation from lawsuits. Hodge said costs would depend on services. The U.S.
Marshals Service, which uses the Leavenworth jail, pays CCA $81 per day per
inmate. That fee includes services the county would not require, Hodge said,
bringing costs closer to $50 per inmate per day. Denning said he expects
research on his business plan, which he intends to submit to commissioners in
six months, will show that he can run a jail cheaper than private jail companies.
Frank Smith, of nonprofit research company Private Corrections Institute,
said private jails keep costs down by paying employees low wages and benefits
and providing little training. Smith, who drove more than 200 miles to speak
to commissioners, said problems plague the private jail industry, including
low professionalism, high employee turnover and the practice of mixing
inmates from different states, leading to tension and riots in several jails.
Smith said his information came from publicly available reports, visits to
private jails and “a vast network” of whistleblowers. Most commissioners
favored studying private jails as an alternative to building more jails. “An
individual may have different feelings about the question of public or
private (jail) facilities … but all of us need to keep in mind the bottom
line, which is the taxpayer's pocket,” Commissioner Ed Eilert
said. “Our objective should be to provide the most efficient, appropriate
incarceration services at the most effective price. If that involves …
changing an attitude, we need to do that,” Eilert
said. “If this is in fact an economical way of providing equal services and
coverage for our inmates, we owe it to our taxpayers to take a hard look,”
Peterson said. “I think they make a persuasive case as to how a private
entity can operate a prison for less than government can and be just as
accountable,” Segale said. Chairwoman Annabeth
Surbaugh said the county should wait for the sheriff's plan before
considering private jails.
May 30, 2007 Kansas City Star
Searching for a way to ease jail crowding and save money, Johnson County
commissioners are considering striking a deal with a private, for-profit
corrections facility in Leavenworth. Officials with Corrections Corp. of
America, one of the nation’s largest private penal firms, will meet with
commissioners today to consider how the two could work together to meet the
county’s growing need for jail space. Sheriff Frank Denning says the problem
has been ignored for nearly a decade, but opposes the idea of private jails.
In 2005, a consultant’s report showed that a proposed 416-bed jail expansion
would be full immediately if it opened in 2009 and an additional 752 beds
were recommended to be opened a year later, said Joe Waters, the county’s director
of facilities. “Somewhere this is going to overtake us where we’re doing
nothing more than running jails,” Commissioner Doug Wood of Olathe said.
“We’ve got to get a handle on this.” Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp.
wants to expand its operation on the western bluff of the Missouri River to
build more beds for federal prisoners. That would open space at the 802-bed
Leavenworth Detention Center, a maximum-security facility that the firm wants
to expand to 1,122 beds for offenders from across the region and beyond. For
Johnson County, that could forestall the costly construction and operating
expenses of new county jails. Supporters say it also could free up county
money for such other needs as a juvenile detention center, courthouse or even
the research triangle proposed by area universities. Supporters of for-profit
jails say the private sector can do the job more efficiently and save
taxpayers up to half the cost of inmate boarding. Critics contend bottom-line
law enforcement is a risk to public safety that is not worth taking. It is an
idea that has been kicked around for decades in Johnson County with four
sheriffs and has gone nowhere. “We’re not here to grow the sheriff’s office,
but I’m trying to blow this myth that somebody else can do this a whole lot
cheaper than we can,” Denning recently told commissioners. Denning said the
county’s two detention centers were safe, secure and cost-effective. The last
escape was 24 years ago, and the last inmate killed in custody was 29 years
ago. Most county commissioners, however, were unconvinced that the sheriff
had explored all his options to building more jails or backed up his plan
with hard numbers. “I don’t think the public is willing to pay the price,”
Commissioner Ed Peterson said. “We’ve got to find some other options.”
Private jails are not the answer, Denning said. “There aren’t very many
success stories out there,” he told commissioners. “And there should not be
any profit in people.” Denning said that some private jails have staffing
ratios of one jailer for every 35 inmates. In Johnson County, the ratio is
closer to one deputy for every six inmates. “We know what we’re doing,”
Denning said. Ken Kopczynski of Private Corrections
Institute Inc., a nonprofit group that opposes private prisons, said
for-profit firms are notoriously understaffed and have turnover rates as high
as 50 percent. Deputies in Johnson County have a 6 percent turnover rate.
“You get what you pay for,” Kopczynski said.
Sheriff’s spokesman Tom Erickson was more blunt.
For-profit jailers are salesmen, he said. “They’re going to tell you whatever
… you want to hear to get you to purchase their product, which is bed space.
“They can promise you everything in the world … but we have enough
documentation to prove that they are a really bad idea.” Not so fast, said
Ray Hodge, Corrections Corp.’s senior director of business development. “What
we’re offering is a chance for the county to consolidate its farmed-out
prisoners in an accredited facility … at a fairly reasonable price, certainly
far cheaper than the county can do it,” Hodge said.
Kansas Department of
Corrections
May 7, 2019 dnews.com
Report: Private
prison health care provider falling short
TOPEKA, Kan. —
The company that provides health care for Kansas and Idaho prison inmates
frequently did not meet standards of care required by its contract with the
state, according to an analysis of hundreds of pages of data. The Kansas City
Star reported Corizon Health’s performance documents from July 2015 to
December 2018 showed inmates regularly didn’t see a medical professional even
after complaining several times about the same ailments. It also showed
almost 20 percent of the 10,000 inmates in Kansas prisons are on psychotropic
medications but many prisons didn’t report hours
worked by psychiatrists for several months. In the same three years, the
state fined Corizon $1 million in performance-based penalties, and another
$6.4 million for not meeting staffing requirements, particularly for
psychiatrists. Corizon, the nation’s largest for-profit medical provider for
prisons and jails, has faced issues in other states. In December, Idaho’s
state Board of Correction voted to extend its $46 million-plus-a-year
contract with Corizon for two years, but the board also voted to immediately launch
a process to take the contract out to bid at the end of the two-year
extension, The Idaho Press-Tribune reported. Idaho has faced multiple
lawsuits and court orders over inmate health care. The mother of one inmate,
Marques Davis, alleges in a lawsuit filed against Corizon that her son’s
complaints about headaches and muscle weakness were ignored for months while
he was held at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. Davis eventually died of
a fungal infection in his brain that was undetected by prison medical staff.
“It’s showing a clear and consistent pattern of delaying, postponing or not
providing necessary medical treatment,” said Leland Dempsey, the lawyer for
Davis’ mother, Shermaine Walker. “That’s what this
is showing (and) that’s what our whole lawsuit is about.” A federal judge in
Oregon in December approved a $10 million judgment against Corizon and other
defendants, settling a lawsuit brought by the parents of a 26-year-old woman
who died pleading for medical help while detoxing from heroin in an Oregon
jail. Kansas is one of the only states in the country that requires an
independent third party to observe its inmate health care contractor. As part
of the contract with the Tennessee-based Corizon, a team from the University
of Kansas Medical Center provides monthly reviews of a sample of health care
records at Kansas’ prisons. Kansas pays Corizon about $70 million to $80
million a year, depending on the prison population. Jeanny
Sharp, a spokeswoman for the corrections department, said the agency levies
fines whenever Corizon falls below 90 percent compliance in a month. “I would
hope the people of Kansas and their representatives would have a strong
interest in whether that $70 million (a year) is being well spent and whether
they were getting their money’s worth,” said Eric Balaban, a senior staff
attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.
Balaban said Corizon is writing off the fines as the cost of doing business
in Kansas without doing anything meaningful to improve its care. Corizon
spokeswoman Eve Hutcherson said in an email that the company stands by the
care it provides in Kansas. She noted during the last five years no court
rulings or settlements related to patient care have gone against the company
or the Kansas Department of Corrections. She said she couldn’t comment on the
Davis case but “we will defend our care strongly in court.” Kansas Gov. Laura
Kelly’s administration audited Corizon’s 2018 performance after she took
office and found several problems. Keith Bradshaw, the head of the
corrections department’s finance division, told lawmakers in February that
the administration was tentatively planning to extend the contract one more
year, and then re-bid it if Corizon’s performance doesn’t improve.
Mar
2, 2019 kake.com
Kansas
reduces payments to prison health care company
The
company that provides health care in Kansas prison is being paid millions
less than it is due because it didn't meet some of the agreement's terms. The
Kansas News Service reports Tennessee-based Corizon Health didn't hire enough
nurses and other health workers, and didn't meet
other performance standards. The state currently has a $68.8 million contract
with Corizon. The state penalized the company $534,880 for not meeting performance
standards last year. Keith Bradshaw, finance director of the Kansas
Department of Corrections, told lawmakers last month that his agency will
renew its contract for Corizon for a year, rather than the two-year option in
the contract. He says the second year would be renewed if things improve.
Corizon spokeswoman Eve Hutcherson said the company is evaluating the state's
information.
January
21, 2018 kansascity.com
What is $2 billion buying Kansas and Missouri in prison health care? Few people
know
Shermaine Walker’s son died of a rare fungal
brain infection last year in a Kansas prison, and since then she’s been
trying to find out whether the prison’s private health care contractor could
have stopped it. That same contractor, Corizon Health, oversees inmate care
in Missouri prisons. A state legislator there contends Corizon staff
misdiagnosed his uncle’s cancer. He’s also asking how that happened.
Corizon’s contracts with the corrections departments of Kansas and Missouri
are worth almost $2 billion combined over 10 years — yet there’s little
transparency about how that money is being spent. “In my time I’ve not
experienced a specific report in terms of Corizon or their performance in
their contracts,” said Kansas Rep. Russ Jennings, a Republican from Lakin who
is chairman of the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.
Jennings said that’s not unusual for state contractors, but Corizon is not a
run-of-the-mill vendor. As the largest for-profit prison health care provider
in the country, Corizon is a lightning-rod for criticism from prisoners,
their family members, the American Civil Liberties Union and others who say
it takes public money and provides little care. All in an effort, they say,
to maximize its profits. Hundreds of inmates in Missouri and Kansas have
filed suits against the company alleging substandard care. Susan Lawrence, a
physician from California and expert witness in correctional medical
malpractice cases, said Corizon, like most prison health care companies, has
a bad reputation. “I have never heard of one that people say, ‘You know, they
do a really, really good job,’ ” Lawrence said. “They’re private, their goal
is to make money, so they put policies in place that aren’t necessarily
(intended) to benefit the patient,” she said. The company says they’re
providing high-level care in difficult environments, and for every lawsuit
there are more inmates satisfied with their care. “Reporting about
correctional health care often focuses on a single patient and that patient’s
allegation of poor care,” Corizon spokeswoman Martha Harbin said via email.
“I would be happy to provide you with a file containing the many, many cards
and notes we have received from patients.” But only a few people outside of
the prisons know what’s going on inside the infirmaries. The Kansas
Department of Corrections, or KDOC, has a small clinical team from the
University of Kansas Medical Center reviewing Corizon’s work. And the
department collects some data on services provided and medical outcomes. The
Missouri Department of Corrections does not. Neither state produced any data
in response to requests from The Star. Both state contracts have minimum
staffing requirements for Corizon set in the contracts and the Kansas
contract has financial penalties if Corizon does not meet certain performance
benchmarks. But KDOC did not respond when asked what, if any, penalties it
had handed down. An open records request for that information is pending.
Missouri’s contract has no performance penalties or bonuses. Karen Pojmann, the communications director for the Missouri
Department of Corrections, said Corizon gives no annual report to the
department and there’s no way for the department to provide data on inmate
health outcomes. “Part of the challenge is that our database system is
antiquated and it’s very hard to generate those types of reports,” Pojmann said. Karen Russo, a consultant for families of
inmates, has for decades studied both Corizon and its previous iteration as
Correctional Medical Services. The company changed its name after merging
with another prison health care provider in 2011. Russo, the founder of the
Wrongful Death and Injury Institute in Kansas City, said the company has a
checkered past that state leaders ignore because contracting out provides
them some insulation from lawsuits. “(Legislators) don’t do anything and this
has been going on since 1975,” Russo said. “I could take an article from
1975, I could square it up with 2017, change the date and the numbers and the
names and that’s it. ... There’s no accountability.” But Corizon is now
coming under more scrutiny in both Kansas and Missouri. In response to Shermaine Walker’s story about her son’s brain infection
death, Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley from Topeka said the
state should consider not renewing the company’s contract when it comes up in
July 2019. Missourinet, an online news consortium
of radio stations, reported in February that some Democrats in the Missouri
Legislature are also having second thoughts about Corizon. They include
Missouri Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., who said Corizon staff misdiagnosed his
uncle’s prostate cancer as ulcers and his uncle died shortly after leaving
prison. Franks didn’t respond to an interview request. Absent public data,
it’s hard to know how Corizon is doing beyond anecdotes — positive ones
provided by the company and negative ones from people like Walker, Franks and
the inmates themselves. In Kansas and Missouri, 283 medical malpractice
lawsuits have been filed against Corizon since 2011, including one brought by
Walker that’s still pending. Walker, from Wichita, says her son broke down
physically and mentally, eventually drinking his own urine, while the
infection ate away at him over months in the Hutchinson Correctional Facility.
“It was something to see this happening and know nobody was helping him,”
Walker said. “It was unbelievable.” Corizon has said it sympathizes with
Walker, but can’t release more details about her son’s case because of
patient privacy laws. Harbin, the Corizon spokeswoman, said the number of
suits filed against the company is not high, given that the company’s
employees had millions of patient visits over that time period. “Lawsuits are
a fact of life among doctors in the United States and even more so when you
consider the highly litigious nature of corrections,” Harbin said via email.
“The presence of a lawsuit is not necessarily indicative of any wrongdoing or
the merits of the case, and the statistics bear this out.” Harbin said less
than 10 percent of the concluded suits resulted in any kind of settlement.
The remaining 90 percent resulted in a verdict in Corizon’s favor, were
dismissed, or were administratively closed. Harbin also provided copies of a
dozen praise-filled notes, including one from a Lansing Correctional Facility
inmate who said the Corizon staff compassionately removed a lump from his
shoulder under local anesthesia and then sent it to a lab for testing and
cleaned the wound for 12 days after. But Russo said the lawsuits represent a
small sample of inmate complaints, because prisoners can’t file suit until
they’ve gone through the corrections department’s grievance process. She said
the suits are easy for Corizon to swat down because it’s hard for prisoners
to keep up with paperwork deadlines and court fees unless they get
court-appointed legal counsel. Russo also said even most attorneys don’t
understand the challenge of taking on a health care provider that has control
of all of a patients’ health records and can prevent
the patient from seeking a second opinion. “These cases are not straight-line
medical malpractice cases,” Russo said. “They are much more complex.” The
federal suits against the company brought by inmates in Kansas and Missouri
contain a range of complaints, from the common to the bizarre. Multiple suits
claim that Corizon employees classified medical conditions as “cosmetic” in
order to avoid providing care, including one by Philip Vitello who said staff
at the Missouri state prison in St. Joseph denied him surgery to remove a
tumor on his shoulder. Vitello was not appointed counsel, but a magistrate
judge ruled last month that Michael Toney, a prisoner at the Kansas state
prison in El Dorado, should be. He’s now being represented by a Wichita law
firm. Toney’s suit alleges that he suffered from bloody, painful bowel
movements for months while Corizon staff members did nothing but prescribe
him an ineffective hemorrhoid cream. When they finally referred him to a
doctor outside the prison system, that doctor diagnosed him with “rectal
fissures” that would require surgery. By that point Toney said his condition
had gotten so painful that he requested a liquid diet because “to plaintiff,
losing 40 pounds is better than passing a solid stool.” But Corizon still
didn’t get him the surgery. Lawrence, the physician and expert witness, said
Toney’s claims sound frighteningly plausible to her. Lawrence spent three
years working for another for-profit prison health care provider in federal
immigration detention centers. She said at one facility an inmate came to her
saying he had been complaining to the nursing staff about his rectal bleeding
for more than a year. “So I did a physical exam and he had a rock-hard liver
due to metastasization,” Lawrence said. “He had
cancer. He had rectal cancer. ... When he pulled up his shirt you could see
the outline of his liver. I had never seen anything like it.” Lawrence said
the nursing staff had not only ignored the man’s complaints, they had also
recorded him exercising in the prison yard, to try and build a case against
him needing care. “They had videotaped him working out and said ‘How can he
possibly have terminal cancer?’ Well, people can,” Lawrence said. “(But) it
was the attitude of a lot of providers that they were just malingering.” The U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners must be provided health care, and
Kansas and Missouri, along with many other states, privatized that
responsibility decades ago. But some states take a different approach. A
study published in 2013 by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the MacArthur
Foundation found that when New Jersey and Connecticut contracted directly
with their state university medical centers to provide prison health care it
resulted in improvements in several areas, as well as cost savings that went
back to the states. Harbin said those results haven’t been duplicated
elsewhere. “There is enough evidence of challenges in state and
university-run prison health services (Texas, California) to demonstrate that
these are not superior systems of care,” Harbin said via email. The same Pew
study quoted Viola Riggin, KDOC’s director of
health care services, as saying that Kansas’ system of privatized care backed
up by oversight from the University of Kansas Department of Family Medicine
provides the best of both worlds. “The key is oversight, and our data
collection system allows me to track which inmate did not receive a physical
exam, and if not, why not,” Riggin told Pew and
MacArthur. KDOC did not make Riggin available for
an interview for this story. A KU Medical Center spokeswoman said the
center’s role is to review Corizon’s staffing levels and staff credentials,
check inmate health care grievances that reach the corrections secretary
level and look into all inmate deaths. Missouri used to have an oversight
contract with Jo Riggs, a nursing professor at the University of Central
Missouri. Riggs said her work was initially funded through a state grant but
about three years ago the state dropped the grant and renegotiated its
contract so Corizon would pay her instead. “I have found that they met or
exceeded the performance expectations on most of the indicators I was
measuring,” Riggs said. Riggs said she’s taking time off from the project in
2018. Harbin said Corizon is looking for a replacement and in the meantime is
still vetted by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, an
accreditation group. Jennings, the chairman of the Kansas House’s corrections
committee, said there’s another step his state could consider to add more
oversight of Corizon. The former head of the state’s juvenile justice
administration, Jennings served on a “corrections ombudsman’s board” in the
1980s that had the authority to investigate inmate and prison staff
complaints. He said the board was disbanded long ago, but the legislature
could consider bringing it back. “It might be something to revisit and have a
conversation about,” Jennings said.
Feb
8, 2018 cjonline.com
Kansas Senate GOP, Democrats embrace bill limiting privatization at state
prisons
A rare exhibition of Senate bipartisanship Wednesday led to a committee’s
prompt approval of a bill to prohibit outsourcing of personnel management
operations at state prison facilities. Motivation for the change reflected
apprehension about approval of a $362 million contract with CoreCivic, a Tennessee company that builds and operates
private prisons, to construct and maintain for 20 years a new Lansing
Correctional Facility. Under the contract, the Kansas Department of
Corrections would retain supervision of corrections officers, wardens and
other personnel. Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning and Senate Minority
Leader Anthony Hensley co-sponsored Senate Bill 328 to prohibit the private
company from subsequently being granted power to take over personnel
operations at Kansas adult and juvenile facilities. The limitation wouldn’t
apply to contracting for food, medical or consulting services. “The
legislative intent is not to prohibit normal operating services to be
contracted out to the private sector,” said Denning, a Republican from
Overland Park. “Rather, it narrowly prohibits Lansing prison security,
including the supervision of inmates by corrections officers and the warden,
from being privatized.” Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said the legislation
endorsed by the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee was based on
concern about the record of private prison companies being hit with lawsuits
and complaints. Issues included chronic under-staffing, hiring of unqualified
officers, high turnover and inadequate medical and education programs, he
said. “While we have contracted out the construction of that facility,”
Hensley said, “we need to ensure that the department remains in the business
of managing and operating our own prisons. We should not turn over the
day-to-day operations to a private entity.” No one testified against the
Senate bill, which was approved on a voice vote without the standard 24-hour
delay after a hearing. In January, then-Gov. Sam Brownback and a coalition of
top House and Senate Republicans, including Denning, approved a 20-year, $362
million contract for construction of the new prison at Lansing. Hensley and
another Democrat on the State Finance Council voted against the lease-to-own
contract developed by KDOC and CoreCivic. Lobbyists
with close personal relationships with Brownback were hired by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of
America, to secure the State Finance Council’s approval. The prison at
Lansing would have 1,900 maximum- and minimum-security beds and 500
minimum-security beds. Introduction of a modern prison is expected to reduce
the number of corrections officers at Lansing from 680 to fewer than 400.
Robert Choromanski, executive director of the
Kansas Organization of State Employees, said the union supported the Senate
bill because it would clearly prohibit outsourcing or privatization of
management operations at state corrections facilities. He said KOSE had many
officers, counselors, maintenance specialists and administrative assistants
who “do a fine job of making the state prison facilities run in a
professional manner under trying circumstances working long hours for little
pay.” Cook told MTN News Thursday that he believes the entire
$30 million, or more, could ultimately be used to offset human-service budget
cuts that the administration is preparing to make, to balance the budget.
Bullock, however, said Tuesday he doesn’t see how a new contract would yield
any more than $15 million to $17 million, under the law passed by Republicans
– and that it’s just bad business to be pressured into extending a contract
that may not be needed. “I want to make sure when we go forward, as we look
at Shelby, that it is a good deal for Montanans,” he told MTN News. Bullock
said his administration is taking steps to appraise the value of the prison
and assess how it fits into the state prison system, in the coming years.
“Without any sort of an assessment of our needs going forward, without an
appraisal to say what this (prison) is worth – I think it’s premature to say,
`Here’s what we should do with it.’” CoreCivic
didn’t respond to a request for comment, or questions about whether it’s been
negotiating with the governor. Cook said he sees no scenario where the Shelby
prison won’t be needed for years into the future – and that if the governor
doesn’t act, the money will stay with CoreCivic.
Jan 5, 2018 ljworld.com
State Finance Council delays decision on Lansing prison project; questions
over private contractor persist
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback and top legislative leaders agreed Thursday
to delay for two weeks a decision on whether to approve a 20-year, $300
million contract to build a new prison facility at Lansing. In a meeting of
the State Finance Council, which is made up of the governor and top leaders
from both chambers, Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, made
a motion to table the decision until Jan. 18, citing concerns that key
details of the proposed contract still have not been finalized. “I don’t want
to have to ask forgiveness for this,” Denning said, noting other major
contracts that the Legislature has had to fix, including the once-proposed
demolition of the Docking State Office Building. “If I make a bad decision,
then I want to own it. But I don’t want to make a decision today until both
sides have agreed to the lease buy-back agreement, and I’ve had a chance to
look at it.” Denning was referring to a provision in the contract detailing
the terms under which the private prison company selected for the project, CoreCivic, would transfer ownership of the facility back
to the state of Kansas at the end of the lease. The Department of Corrections
is proposing to contract with a private prison company, CoreCivic,
to build the prison and lease it back to the state after 20 years. The state
would still be responsible for staffing and operating the prison, but CoreCivic would be responsible for all maintenance and
repairs during the term of the lease. The plan calls for demolishing the
medium security unit at the prison, which was built in the 1980s, and building
a new facility that would house both medium and maximum security prisoners,
who are now housed in the original prison building that dates back to the
Civil War era. Other members of the committee expressed concerns about the
Department of Corrections’ plans to reduce staffing, including mental health
counselors, once the new, more modern facility is built. Department of
Corrections Secretary Joe Norwood said the project would save the state about
$23 million over the term of the lease, most of which would come from
personnel costs. He said it currently takes 682 full-time equivalent
employees to staff the prison. He said that could be cut to 371 with a new
facility. That’s because the original 1860s-era building, which houses the
maximum security unit, was designed inefficiently by modern standards and
thus requires more correctional officers because they don’t have clear lines
of sight to monitor an entire cell block, Corrections officials have said.
Norwood said with a new, combined facility, his agency could consolidate
things like food service and medical care into a single unit instead of
having separate units at each of the two main buildings. But Sen. Carolyn
McGinn, R-Wichita, who chairs the Senate budget committee, said she was
concerned about cutbacks in other areas, including mental health staff, which
would be reduced from 53 to 35 positions. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader
Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said he was concerned that CoreCivic
has been the target of numerous lawsuits in the past, some having to do with
inadequate staffing at the private prisons the company runs, as well as a
Department of Justice probe into the company’s staffing system. Norwood said
that under the proposed contract, staffing would still be in the hands of the
agency, and the Legislature, which approves the agency’s budget. He added
that the staffing plan is based on National Institute of Corrections
standards and that it had been reviewed by independent corrections experts
from Indiana. “But it’s a similar model, that is that we’re going to be using
technology rather than people, and there were concerns expressed by the
Department of Justice about that model,” Ward said. In the budget bill that
lawmakers passed last year, a provision was inserted giving the Department of
Corrections authority to enter into a lease-purchase contract for a new
facility at Lansing, as long as it was reviewed by the Joint Committee on
State Building Construction and approved by the State Finance Council. But
the plan has been controversial since its inception. A Legislative Post Audit
review last year concluded that the facility could be built at a lower cost
by issuing bonds instead of a lease-purchase agreement. The Department of
Corrections, however, rejected that idea, saying CoreCivic
was able to secure private financing at interest rates competitive with the
going rate for state bonds. In an earlier meeting of the joint building
committee, some members suggested the agency should consider other
communities for the prison, and open up the site selection process to
competitive proposals from different communities, a process the agency has
used in the past when building new prisons. Also at that meeting in November,
the committee voted to recommend that the agency start over by soliciting new
proposals with a wider array of financing options. Norwood, however, said the
agency chose not to follow that recommendation because the joint committee is
only set up as an advisory panel. Brownback said at the end of the meeting
that the Finance Council will meet once more in about a week to receive
answers to questions that lawmakers still have. Then it will meet again Jan.
18 for an up or down vote on the project.
Aug 1, 2017 cjonline.com
State audit contradicts Dept. of Corrections on cost of Lansing lease-purchase
plan
A legislative audit released Monday claims that the Kansas Department of
Corrections missed “key variables” and relied on “inconsistent assumptions”
that tended to favor a more expensive method of replacing the state’s largest
and oldest prison. According to the audit, the Department of Corrections
underestimated the cost of rebuilding Lansing Correctional Facility through a
lease-purchase agreement, a contract that allows a private company to build
the prison and then lease it back to the state until the state purchases it.
That option would likely be scrapped because of the results of the audit,
said J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican and chair of
the transportation and public safety budget committee. The audit says a
preliminary estimate from KDOC placed the project cost at $140 million over
20 years. The total cost predicted by KDOC was $155 million, but the audit
report contends that it would cost $206 million. Auditors found that the best
option would be for the state to issue bonds to build the prison and contract
with a company for its maintenance. “These results differ from KDOC’s
preliminary estimates, which were missing key variables and used inconsistent
assumptions that tended to favor a lease-purchase option,” the audit says. KDOC
is now in the process of receiving bids to build the prison in response to a
request for proposals that it issued in April, according to the audit. Bids
are due Friday. KDOC Secretary Joe Norwood said in a letter in response to
the audit that the department would accept auditors’ help picking a bidder to
contract with. The audit says the department failed to include in its cost
estimates the final price it would pay to buy back the prison at the end of
the lease, did not adjust prices over time, presented different construction
costs based on the ownership arrangement and left out what auditors found to
be the least expensive option. It said the least expensive option — building
the prison with bond money and contracting its maintenance — would cost $178
million over 20 years. KDOC did not dispute any of the findings of the audit,
according to a summary of the report. Rep. John Barker, an Abilene Republican
and chair of the Legislative Post Audit committee, said he thought the
Department of Corrections was receptive to the findings and that auditors
found costs KDOC overlooked. Rep. Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said he thought the
department or administration had been leaning toward a lease-purchase option.
In an email, KDOC spokesman Todd Fertig said the
agency was “open to whichever funding option is best for the state.” He said
the real cost of the project would not be known until the state gets bids
from builders.
According to the audit, KDOC has claimed the project would not have a significant
impact on the state’s budget. The audit says the state could find savings by
combining maximum and medium security prisoners into one building and
reducing staff. Savings could also be realized with a more energy-efficient
building than the ones now at Lansing, including one built in the 1860s.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said he was
concerned reduced staffing would lead to more disciplinary problems, like
recent outbreaks at El Dorado Correctional Facility. “That concerns me
because we’ve seen what’s happened in El Dorado, where they’re understaffed,
they’ve had to work double shifts and we’ve had some real security problems
down there among the inmates,” Hensley said. Claeys,
however, said Lansing already requires a higher level of staffing because of
its age. A modern building, he said, would require staffing similar to that
at El Dorado, which is currently understaffed. Rebuilding Lansing, Claeys said, would help prevent uprisings at overcrowded
prisons like El Dorado Correctional Facility, which has seen several
incidents in recent weeks. He said the prison’s population has been rising
without any new space given to inmates, and it faces severe staffing
shortages. “I think having Lansing rebuilt certainly alleviates some of the
pressure on El Dorado,” Claeys said. Claeys said he had a proposal for the coming legislative
session to raise wages for correctional officers to help fill staffing
shortages. “We’re going to do something, and it should be a priority,” Barker
said. Claeys said the Legislature would go with a
plan “that’s the least expensive for taxpayers and gets us the result of a
modern, efficient prison facility at Lansing.” He said a provision included
in the budget lawmakers passed in June would ensure that a plan for the prison
gets approval from the Legislature.
Jan
8, 2015 Aly Van Dyke
Dirty
kitchen conditions and violations repeated for several months are among some
of the more consistent findings in food safety inspections for Kansas
prisons. Although the corrections department adheres to Kansas Department of
Agriculture food safety guidelines, like restaurants, it doesn’t rely on KDA
staff to do the inspections. Instead, both monthly and sporadic audits are
conducted by Kansas Department of Corrections employees, some of whom work in
the facilities they inspect. “I hear what you’re saying in terms of looking
like it’s all under one DOC umbrella,” said Jeremy Barclay, spokesman for the
KDOC. “But we interact with so many different state agencies and branches of
government and different divisions within the agency, that it’s pretty
secure.” The inspections cover the 19 months between January 2013 and July
2014. They include seven of the state’s 10 prisons and total 19 facilities,
such as satellite units. The KDOC filled the request free of charge, because
another entity already had requested the inspections. Inspections weren’t
provided for the Topeka, Lansing and Larned
juvenile correctional facilities because they weren’t in the original
request. The nearly 340 inspections show noncompliance and deficiencies month
after month at several facilities. The Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex
in Topeka, for example, repeated several mistakes for at least 10 months,
including not taking proper temperature logs; not enforcing handwashing and
glove use; not having employees and staff restrain hair properly; not keeping
accurate chemical logs; and not having inmate staff up to date on food safety
training. “Three persons seen licking fingers and continuing to work,” reads
a May 2013 inspection of the KJCC. “Gloves worn to handle bread and meat
patties used to touch face and pick item up off floor and touch door
handles,” according to an April 2014 inspection of the facility. Handwashing
issues were noted in 11 of the facility’s 19 inspections. But the KJCC isn’t
alone in its repetitive errors. In the Ellsworth Correctional Facility,
inspectors reported issues with bugs in the lights for 11 months. At the
Winfield Correctional Facility, a knife was used to keep a dishwasher’s fill
switch in position the full 19 months. At the El Dorado Correctional
Facility, waste containers went without covers for eight months, a soap
dispenser remained out of service for 11 months, fans went without cleaning
for seven months and water leaked from fountain fixtures on the west wall for
four months. The term “filthy” shows up in 11 inspections, “dirty” in 54 and
“bugs” in 46 — though the vast majority of those instances refer to insects
filling light fixtures. The data include 338 inspections. “Hygiene issues are
always something we have to work with,” Barclay said. “We’re housing a host
of individuals that cleaning hasn’t always been a priority in their life.
We’re re-teaching from the ground up.” The departme
nt can take administrative action — like fines and
reconsidering the contract — if the food service provider isn’t meeting the
terms of the contract, he said. However, he added Aramark, the food service
contractor for most of the prisons, has demonstrated it will take whatever
administrative steps required to ensure that isn’t necessary. The KDOC serves
about 10,000 inmates three times each day, yet have relatively few violations
when it comes to proper temperatures or insects — violations that often
plague restaurants that don’t serve nearly that amount of meals in a day.
Barclay said he thinks that has to do with the nature of the prison food
system. It, unlike restaurants, is a 24/7 process. Just when one crew is
wrapping up lunch, the next one comes in to start dinner. “You always have
somebody on site,” he said. “It’s a continual go-go-go process.” Also, he
said, prisons for the most part deal with processed foods, so the chances of
undercooking something rarely comes up. “The food is so processed, there's
not really a food safety risk,” he said. Unlike the KDA, the prison system
doesn’t distinguish between critical and noncritical food safety violations,
and its record keeping is radically different. Each prison appears to have
its own inspection format, making comparisons difficult. Also, it wasn’t always
clear when something was a deficiency or merely a suggested improvement. As
most of the inspections were entered manually into The Topeka
Capital-Journal’s online database, some numbers of violations might be
different than anticipated. The inspection schedule differs, as well. While
restaurants are inspected annually, unless follow-up visits are required,
each correctional facility has a monthly inspection conducted by the safety
officer employed at the facility. Every so often, a food service contract
manager from central administration will perform an audit — usually announced
beforehand — on the prison kitchens. The visits, Barclay said, are to make
sure the contract is “followed to a T.” Although both inspectors are
employees of the KDOC, he said, the food service contract manager falls on an
entirely different line item in its budget — creating some degree of
separation. Also, Barclay said, the employees are inspecting the work done by
a contractor, not other KDOC employees. Finally, he said, the KDOC has to
make annual reports to the Kansas Legislature, and the department of
administration actually awards the food service contracts, creating further
checks and balances on the prison food system. Violations oftentimes differed
from the monthly on-site inspections and the audits from the central office.
The 22 audits included in the request averaged between eight and nine
violations, while the 316 monthly inspections, conducted by each facility’s
safety compliance officer, averaged between three and four. The Larned Correctional Mental Health Facility, for example,
showed everything was satisfactory on its monthly reports, but had up to 13
deficiencies on its three audits. Lack of training for inmate workers was
documented on all three audits, which were conducted in June and December
2013 and in June 2014. Aramark holds the food service contracts in all the
prisons, save the KJCC, which switched last October to Trinity Services Group
after the service went out for bid. It was awarded a nearly $400,000 contract
to work from October 2013 through June 2014. In each prison, Aramark pays for
a manager, an assistant manager and food service supervisors. Under them, are
the inmates, Barclay said. Inmate workers are supposed to be trained and
supervised, but 20 inspections show those areas lacking for several months —
half of which came from the KJCC. Aly Van Dyke can be reached at (785)
295-1270 or aly.vandyke@cjonline.com.
November 27, 2001
Citing a temporary shortage of prison beds, the Kansas Department of
Corrections said Tuesday that it will send 100 inmates to a privately run
institution in Colorado where they will remain until spring. The
agreement with Corrections Corp. of America marks the first time that Kansas
has sought facilities in other states to house some of its prisoners.
Federal money can be used to pay 90 percent of the contract costs with the
private firm. That money cannot be used to pay for space in public facilities
such as county jails. (The Kansas City Star)
Kansas Legislature
September 12, 2006 Kansas City Star
If Phill Kline had legitimate credentials, he wouldn’t need to pad his
résumé. He alleges he “worked to get ‘Jessica’s Law’ passed this year,
increasing sentences for four types of sex crimes against children” (9/7,
Local, “Kline cites record on water rights, sex predators”). Jessica’s Law
was a terrible bill, but one that only our bravest state senators had the
guts to oppose. Whether Kline was for, against or indifferent to it would not
have made one whit of difference. Legislators were stampeded into voting for
it, as they would be for mom, apple pie and the American flag. The bill will
raise our state prison population by 1,000 prisoners, which will cost well
over the average of $22,000 for each in today’s correctional dollars. That’s
22 million bucks a year, for typical prisoners, not high-cost, geriatric sex
offenders, plus another $50 million for bed space to house them. The bill was
bundled by Sen. Derek Schmidt, champion of the for-profit prison GEO Group,
in his effort to actually import rapists, pedophiles and murderers to Kansas.
Not much to take credit for, is it, even if it were deserved? Frank Smith,
Bluff City, Kan.
May 8, 2006 AP
Legislation imposing tougher penalties on child molesters and other sex
offenders went Monday night to the governor's desk. Passage of the bill,
dubbed "Jessica's Law," was part of a deal worked out by House and
Senate negotiators last week, after the House rejected a compromise bill
bundling the popular sex offender measure with legislation the Senate wanted
to allow private prisons in Kansas. The Senate voted 36-2 for the sex
offender bill with no debate, and the House followed with a vote of 122-0,
after which members applauded. Sending Jessica's Law to Gov. Kathleen
Sebelius hinged on a deal negotiators worked out Friday. It called for a
House vote on prisons, followed by the Senate passing Jessica's Law. The
House voted 74-48 against the bill allowing the Department of Corrections to
license and regulate such facilities in counties where voters approve the
idea. It also included $20.5 million in bonding authority to expand state
prisons. "I feel like this is a positive victory in that we got Jessica's
Law separate from an unpopular bill," said Rep. Jan Pauls,
D-Hutchinson. Pauls later thanked colleagues who
"hung in there" until Jessica's Law was separated from private
prisons. "A lot of people were terrified that we might not get this bill
passed," she said, referring to Jessica's Law. Some House members didn't
like the idea of obligating the state to paying off bonds. "We could pay
cash for this and save ourselves a substantial amount of interest," said
Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro. "I don't support additional debt for our
state." Kansas law prohibits housing state prisoners in private
facilities in the state, but they can be housed in private facilities in
other states. Senators had argued for bundling the bills, because increased
penalties for sex offenders would generate the need for an additional 1,000
prison beds by 2016. House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, said the message was
clear. "A lot of people feel strongly that the management and ownership
of prisons is a government function," he said.
May 5, 2006 AP
Efforts to force a single vote on tougher penalties for child molesters
and other sex offenders and allowing private prisons failed, and lawmakers
now will vote each issue separately, under an agreement worked out Friday
night by House and Senate negotiators. "It's agreed to," said House
Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka. "I'm happy the Senate decided to do it that
way." Mays said both bills will come up for a vote Monday, when
lawmakers return with an eye toward wrapping up the session. On Wednesday,
the House strongly rejected a compromise bill bundling the popular sex
offender measure dubbed "Jessica's Law" with legislation the Senate
wanted to allow private prisons in Kansas.
May 3, 2006 AP
Opposition to private prisons in the House today doomed a compromise
version of a politically popular bill to strengthen penalties for sex
offenders, especially those who prey on children. The tougher penalties,
known as "Jessica's Law,” were tied by House and Senate negotiators to a
proposal to permit private prisons in Kansas to hold the state's inmates.
Senators previously approved a separate private prisons bill and insisted the
two issues be bundled, while the House hadn't debated the subject. The House
voted 74-49 to reject the bundle, forcing both chambers to resume
negotiations if lawmakers are to send tougher penalties for sex offenders
this year to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. The Senate had approved it Tuesday,
33-7. Rep. Kenny Wilk, who led the effort to send the bill back to
negotiators, said senators were trying to overcome opposition to private
prisons by linking their fate to perhaps the session's most popular proposal.
"They're trying to force-feed us,” said Wilk, R-Lansing. "The House
wants a clean vote on Jessica's Law.” The tougher sanctions are patterned after
a Florida law, also named "Jessica's Law,” for a 9-year-old girl in that
state killed last year by a convicted sex offender. Arkansas, Oregon and
Virginia enacted their own versions this year. The bill calls for a minimum
25-year sentence for adults convicted of any of seven violent sex crimes
against anyone under 14, including rape, aggravated sodomy and sexual
exploitation. Trial judges could impose a lesser penalty in cases with
"substantial and compelling” reasons.
May 2, 2006 AP
Getting tough on child molesters and other sex offenders has been a priority
for legislators since the start of the session, and now they're in position
to send a bill to the governor to do just that. But there could be a problem
- another bill hitched to the sex offender legislation. A House-Senate
conference committee bundled the crime bill with another allowing private
prisons in the state to hold Kansas inmates. The Senate voted 33-7 Tuesday to
send the bill to the House, which last year refused to debate private prisons.
Because it's a House-Senate conference committee proposal, House members must
either accept or reject both ideas. "We'll run it. There's no way to
tell whether it will pass," said Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka. Some see
it as a power play by senators. "It doesn't play well with me. It's not
a game," said Rep. Shari Weber, R-Herington. "Children abused and
exploited shouldn't be held hostage by the personal views of the leadership
of the Senate chamber. The Senate debate focused on opposition to private
prisons. "There are two policies in this bill. The right way is to
separate them," said Sen. Jay Scott Emler, R-Lindsborg.
May 1, 2006 Lawrence Journal-World
For-profit prisons aren’t likely to pop up across the Kansas plains
overnight if, as expected, the Legislature approves a law this week allowing
the prisons to be built here. In fact, the law wouldn’t necessarily mean that
private prisons would ever be used to house existing Kansas prisoners. But it
would allow for the industry to set up shop and begin housing out-of-state
prisoners in any Kansas county where voters approve the idea. In Frank
Smith’s view, it’s a slippery slope. Smith, a critic of private prisons who
lives in Bluff City, believes that Kansas is “buying a lemon” by opening the
door to a business he claims is fundamentally flawed. “I don’t believe you
can have an efficacious private prison because the profit motive rules
everything,” he said. “I don’t think there are any legitimate protections in
this bill. They can build anywhere they can convince the locals — the rubes
and hicks — that it’s not such a bad thing.” Smith, a retired social worker,
argues that private prisons are chronically understaffed and don’t pay enough
to keep good employees. He said there’s no hard evidence that there are more
disturbances inside private prisons, but that the mingling of out-of-state
inmate populations — who often have unequal treatment because of differences
in their states’ respective contracts — is an inherent problem. On July 20,
2004, inmates at the privately run Crowley County Correctional Facility near
Pueblo, Colo., demanded to speak to a warden about grievances. One problem
was that a group of recently imported inmates from Washington state were
earning $60 a month for work assignments, compared with $18.60 for Colorado
inmates. The inmates were denied an audience, and they grew hostile. The
staff was inexperienced and had not had enough training for an emergency,
according to a report by the Colorado Department of Corrections. So the staff
evacuated. Inmates started fires, broke into the management offices, and
broke water pipes, sinks and toilets, causing cells to flood with
contaminated water. A pending lawsuit filed by inmates alleges that when a
special-operations team came in with backup to reclaim the prison, guards
brutalized inmates — forcing them to lie face-down in contaminated water and
dragging people from their cells by their ankles. As the night went on,
inmates were forced to urinate and defecate in their pants because they
weren’t allowed to go to the restroom, the suit alleges.
April 29, 2006 Hutchinson News
Thanks to distortion of our legislative procedures, a bill clearly
against the interests of public safety and protection of Kansas taxpayers may
soon win passage. Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, has
inserted special interest, for-profit prison language into a veto-proof
sexual offender bill. For three years, Schmidt's bills were unable to win
passage on their own merits. Were it not for the valiant efforts of Rep. Jan Pauls, D-Hutchinson, and the misgivings about the process
held by Rep. Mike O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, this bill would likely have made it
to the governor's desk. At a time when the attention of the public has been
focused on deal-making in Washington , D.C., by exposure of scandals such as
the crimes of Jack Abramoff and ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, as
well as the budget earmarks that led to the $230 million "Bridge to
Nowhere," this legislative bundling tactic is particularly brazen. The
bill's existing provisions don't truly protect Kansas. Instead it encourages
wholesale importation and private transport of out-of-state robbers, rapists,
and murderers. Annual surveys show for-profits have 30 to 45 times more
escapes than public facilities. Closed facilities, frequently shuttered
following rapes and grotesque maltreatment by staff, litter the national
landscape. Imported convicts regularly riot in a half dozen states. Poorly
paid workers often flee, leaving state employees to suppress disturbances. For-profit
staff turnover averages more than three times that of public prisons.
Although the Kansas measure has a provision allowing a state takeover of
failed private pens, the bill does not adequately address "real
world" problems. It is difficult to imagine how a private operator would
provide adequate insurance for its operations. Examples of potential exposure
include situations like the murder of a Montana prisoner by Hawaiian convicts
at the BRG prison in Texas. Hawaiians twice torched that facility. The Kansas
Department of Corrections already has difficulty filling employee vacancies.
The notion that it could immediately provide hundreds of trained officers and
support staff to operate a remote for-profit where workers had resigned en masse or went on strike is simply ludicrous. The
department lacks the authority to incarcerate other states' prisoners, but a
private pen in Kansas would house many hundreds of such convicts. For-profit
salesmen testifying before legislative committees claimed staff from other
states could fill in, but they often are already unable to meet contractual
staffing level requirements in those distant locations. After summer 2004
riots by out-of-state prisoners at the Corrections Corporation of America
facilities at Crowley, Colo., and Beattyville, Ky., scores of employees
immediately quit their jobs. Hutchinson already has experienced some perils
of privatization, witness the jailing of former Reno County Sheriff Larry
Leslie for accepting $284,000 in payments from a private firm that used to
operate a jail annex. Kansas would be wise to heed the call for a moratorium
on construction of these "Rent-a-pens" by denominations ranging
from Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and the United Church of
Christ. Frank Smith, Bluff City
April 23, 2006 Topeka Capital-Journal
A bill clearly against the interests of public safety and protection of
Kansas taxpayers may soon win passage. Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt
has inserted special interest, for-profit prison language into a veto-proof
sexual offender bill, HB2576. For years, Schmidt's similar bills were unable
to win passage on their own merits. The bill is presently in conference
committee to be considered when legislators return from adjournment. This
legislative "bundling" tactic is particularly brazen. Through
dozens of substantial contributions from the for-profit GEO Group and its
lobbyists, Schmidt and his colleagues have been amply rewarded for ignoring
the public interest. The bill encourages wholesale importation and private
transport of out-of-state robbers, rapists, and murderers. Annual surveys
show for-profits have 30-45 times more escapes than public facilities.
Imported convicts regularly riot in a half dozen states. Poorly paid workers
often flee, leaving distant state employees to suppress disturbances. The
Kansas's Department of Corrections already has substantial difficulty
recruiting employees. At year's end, 121 uniformed positions were vacant. It
couldn't immediately provide hundreds of trained officers and support staff
at a remote for-profit where workers struck or resigned en
masse. For-profit salesmen testified that staff from faraway states could
fill in, but they often are already unable to meet their own contractual
staffing requirements. After 2004 riots by out-of-state prisoners at
facilities in Colorado and Kentucky, scores of low-paid employees immediately
quit their jobs. Kansas would be wise to heed the call for a moratorium on
construction or outright abolition of these "Rent-a-pens" by denominations
including Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and the United Church
of Christ. FRANK SMITH, Private Corrections Institute, Bluff City
April 19, 2006 Chanute Tribune
Op-Ed By: Frank Smith Private Corrections Institute. Thanks to distortion
of our legislative procedures a bill clearly against the interests of public
safety and protection of Kansas taxpayers may soon win passage. Senate
Majority Leader Derek Schmidt from Independence has inserted special
interest, for-profit prison language into a veto-proof sexual offender bill,
HB2576. For three years, Schmidt's similar bills were unable to win passage
on their own merits. The bill is presently in conference committee and will
be considered when the Legislature returns from adjournment. At a time when
the attention of the public has been focused on deal-making in Washington by
the exposure of scandals such as the crimes of Jack Abramoff and
ex-Representative "Duke" Cunningham, as well as the budget
"earmarks" that led to passage of the $230 million Alaska
"Bridge to Nowhere," this legislative "bundling" tactic
is particularly brazen. Through dozens of substantial contributions from the
for-profit GEO Group and its lobbyists, Schmidt's colleagues and leadership
committees have been amply rewarded for ignoring the public interest. Woodson
County and Yates Center were led to believe a private prison would provide an
economic boon. Quite the opposite is the case. Peer reviewed national studies
from six universities, in Washington, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina and Kentucky
and research from a D.C. think tank indicate that even public prisons, where
staff are often paid twice as much as in the privates, don't help the
economy. Communities within a 50-mile radius of Yates Center lack the
available workforce to staff such a facility. Guards would require clean
criminal and domestic violence records, a GED or high school diploma, and
need to be young enough to physically handle the extremely stressful and
dangerous shift-work environment. The for-profits endure a 52 percent annual
staff turnover, more than thrice that of better-paying public facilities.
Guard make $8 hourly, or less commonly, work two jobs depriving them of the
alertness necessary to protect themselves and other staff, inmates and the
public alike. For-profits regularly contest assessments and overcharge
taxpayers for millions of dollars. 79 percent of Corrections Corporation of
American and 69 percent of GEO's facilities have received tax abatement and
infrastructure incentives leaving municipalities with little to show for
their investments. If GEO somehow actually decided to build in Woodson, it
expects free land with utilities already in place. The bill's existing
provisions don't truly protect Kansas. Instead it encourages wholesale importation
and private transport of out-of-state robbers, rapists, and murderers. Annual
surveys show for-profits have 30-45 times more escapes than public
facilities. Closed facilities, frequently shuttered following rapes and
grotesque maltreatment by poorly screened staff, litter the national
landscape. Imported convicts regularly riot in a half dozen states. Poorly
paid workers often flee, leaving distant state employees to suppress
disturbances. Although the measure has a provision allowing a Kansas state
takeover of failed private pens, the bill does not adequately address
"real world" problems. For instance, it's difficult to imagine how
a GEO could provide adequate insurance for its operations. Examples of
potential exposure include situations like the murder of a Montana prisoner
by Hawaiian convicts at BRG's Texas prison. Hawaiians twice torched that
facility. The Kansas Department of Corrections already has substantial
difficulty filling employee vacancies. The notion that it could immediately
provide hundreds of trained officers and support staff to operate a remote
for-profit where workers had resigned en masse or
went on strike is simply ludicrous. The Department lacks the authority to
incarcerate other states' prisoners, but a private pen in Kansas would house
many hundreds of such convicts. For-profit salesmen testifying before
legislative committees claimed staff from other states could fill in, but
they often are already unable to meet contractual staffing level requirements
in those distant locations. After summer 2004 riots by out-of-state prisoners
at the Corrections Corporation of America facilities at Crowley, Colorado and
Beattyville, Kentucky, scores of low-paid employees immediately quit their
jobs. Kansas has already experienced some perils of privatization; witness
the imprisonment of Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie for accepting and
laundering $284,000 in bribes for privatizing his jail. Kansas would be wise
to heed the call for a moratorium on construction or outright abolition of these
"Rent-a-pens" by denominations ranging from Catholic, Episcopal,
Methodist, Presbyterian and the United Church of Christ. *** Frank Smith has
been a researcher and provider in criminal justice and corrections for 35
years and is considered to be a leading expert on for-profit prisons. He
resides in Bluff City.
April 19, 2006 Trading Markets
In Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ budget amendments, offered Tuesday, she is
seeking authorization for $20.5 million in bonds to build prison space to
incarcerate the anticipated increase in inmates from legislation that
increases punishments of sex offenders. On prisons, the proposal for bonding
authority to expand El Dorado prison could clash with a move to build a
private prison. Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz
opposes private prisons, but declined to say whether the bonding proposal
would knock out private prison legislation. “We’re putting forward the
options that we prefer, to at least handle the initial expansion,” Werholtz said.
April 16, 2006 AP
When legislation runs into a roadblock, lawmakers often get around the
obstacle with the time-tested tactic of bundling bills. A bill on death’s
doorstep gets attached to a popular bill — and if there’s motherhood, apple
pie and a touch of divinity in the mix, so much the better. Last year,
senators passed a bill allowing private prisons in Kansas and waited for the
House to act. But the idea is about as popular with many House members as
coddling sex offenders. This year, lawmakers have the mother of motherhood
bills — getting tough on sex offenders, particularly those victimizing
children. It’s just the kind of thing House members can go home and crow
about while seeking re-election. The two chambers passed differing versions
of what’s been dubbed “Jessica’s Law,” and House and Senate negotiators
worked out the differences. But they also bundled it with the private prison
bill so lawmakers must consider both ideas together when they return April 26
to wrap up their session.
April 10, 2006 Lawrence Journal-World
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said she’s willing to accept private prisons to
get a bill that increases penalties for sex offenders. “There are a lot of
protections in place,” Sebelius said of the measure that would authorize the
state to enter into a contract for a private prison. The prison proposal is
contained in a bill that would increase prison sentences for sex offenders.
While there is nearly unanimous support in the Legislature for the sex
offender portion of the bill, there is less support for changing policy to allow
private prisons. The provision would give the corrections secretary authority
over the construction, licensing and oversight of a private prison. In
addition, under the measure, no private prison could be operated in a county
without approval of the county commissioners and a vote of county residents.
But Frank Smith of Bluff City, an outspoken critic of private prisons, said
the private prison industry has been plagued with problems such as prison
riots, low wages for employees and substandard conditions for inmates. “Other
states have had terrible experiences with legislation such as this, which
when passed seemed to provide certain guarantees,” Smith said.
March 24, 2006 Wichita Eagle
With an appalling display of lobbyist strength, special interest legislation
meant to solely enrich the out-of-state for-profit prison industry was
recently forced through a Kansas House committee. Then Wednesday, a bill
authorizing privately owned and operated prisons cleared the full Senate. The
ostensible rationale for bringing nonliving wages to Kansas corrections is
alleged taxpayer savings. But repeated legitimate research fails to
demonstrate any such thrift. And there's no guarantee the proposed private
prisons would ever hold a single Kansas inmate. For-profit operator GEO Group
enlisted economically depressed Woodson County in eastern Kansas to
strengthen its ploy to enable proliferation of its "Rent-a-Pens."
Studies conducted by professors from five universities and an independent
think tank, however, conclusively demonstrate that even public prisons, where
wages are sometimes twice as high, do not improve faltering rural economies.
Prisons dissuade safer and better-paying industries from locating in host
counties. No economic feasibility assessment has ever been done in Woodson
County, which simply couldn't recruit sufficient low-paid employees. A survey
comparing similar-sized populations of a public prison system with national
for-profits indicated the privates had 30 times as many escapes. Liability
damage language has rarely protected any hosting state. And might for-profits
bring corruption? Prosecutors accused former Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie
of taking $284,000 to privatize his jail. To test the efficacy of the
services provided, look no further than the GEO Group's Jena, La., prison and
the Cornell Companies' New Morgan Academy in Morgantown, Pa. Both have been
closed for years after horrendous abuse of scores of juveniles. Management
and Training Corp. closed its prison in Eagle Mountain, Calif., after rioting
and murders. I've visited Corrections Corporation of America prisons in
Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona following such riots. It took law enforcement
from four states to quell the previous riot at the Crowley County, Colo.,
prison. After extensive study, numerous denominations -- including Catholic,
Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and the Church of Christ -- condemned this
industry. Kansas would do well to heed their call. Frank Smith lives in Bluff
City.
Labette Correctional Conservation Camp
Labette County, Kansas
GRW
February 27, 2007 Parsons Sun
Some employees of the Labette Correctional Conservation Camp women's
facility lost vacation time when the facility was transferred to county
management on Feb. 1, but county commissioners say it isn't their fault. On
Monday, commissioners met with LCCC administrators to discuss the situation.
County Commissioner Jerry Carson said the situations at the men's and women's
camps are different because the county has never operated the women's camp
directly. Labette County created the boot-camp style facility in the early
'90s and has held responsibility for operating it. The camp has always been
operated by a private management firm until now, however. The women's camp
was created by the Kansas Department of Corrections a few years later. KDOC
hired the same company to operate the facility and the two have operated in
concert. However, Carson said the differences translate into employees at the
women's camp losing leave time. Carson pointed the finger at GRW Corp., the
Tennessee-based management firm that ran the facilities. Carson said he
thought there was a "gentleman's agreement" with GRW to honor the
vacation time. Carson said he would be willing to meet with camp employees
and explain the situation to them. Commissioner Lonie
Addis agreed with that assessment of the situation but said he didn't like
it. "The simple fact is it's still not fair," Addis said.
Commissioners also discussed setting up times to meet with camp employees to
discuss the county's personnel policy. The county has revised the policy in
order to include camp employees.
Lansing
Correctional Facility
Lansing,
Kansas
Apr
28, 2020 hutchnews.com
Kansas
ethics panel fines former corrections secretary for taking $100K job with CoreCivic
TOPEKA
— The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission has fined former corrections
secretary Joe Norwood $5,000 for taking a job with CoreCivic
after authorizing a lucrative state contract for the company. The ethics
panel also recommended authorities further investigate Norwood’s dealings
with CoreCivic. As corrections secretary under
former Gov. Sam Brownback, Norwood helped orchestrate a 20-year agreement for
CoreCivic to build and operate a new prison
facility at Lansing — a $362 million deal panned by lawmakers and auditors as
overly costly for the state. Norwood immediately went to work for CoreCivic after Gov. Laura Kelly took office in January
2019. Norwood said he was paid $100,000 by CoreCivic
for consultant work last year. The company terminated his contract March 1,
following an inquiry by The Topeka Capital-Journal and a published news
report. A CoreCivic representative said Norwood
didn’t disclose the potential violation of state law when he accepted
employment. State employees who are involved in contract negotiations are
forbidden for two years from accepting payment from the parties they dealt
with. The ethics commission determined Norwood violated the state’s
“revolving door” law because he signed an amendment four months before he
left office that added $3 million to the value of the CoreCivic
contract. Randy Debenham, attorney for Norwood, told the ethics commission
during an April 22 hearing that the former secretary wasn’t directly involved
in negotiations with CoreCivic. “It didn’t occur to
him that simply signing a contract would lead to problems,” Debenham said.
The attorney argued the appropriate sanction for an unintentional,
“technical” ethics violation should be a written admonishment. Ethics
commissioner Jerome Hellmer, a retired district judge
from Salina, said he recognized agency leaders rely upon subordinates to
handle certain tasks. Signing a contract could be an administrative function,
Hellmer said, but Norwood’s relationship with CoreCivic “goes beyond the pale.” The secretary had worked
directly with the company, and the state contract was worth millions of
dollars. “Immediately after his termination, he then turns to the very
entities which he was working with before, and has
acknowledged he benefited by receiving income of roughly $100,000 at least in
one year,” Hellmer said. Mark Skoglund, executive
director of the ethics commission, said this type of ethics violation is
uncommon and among the most serious, especially when individuals profit from
the arrangement as Norwood did. “Revolving door issues speak to a central
concern about people’s ability to have trust in government,” Skoglund said.
The ethics panel by unanimous vote issued the maximum $5,000 fine and
referred the matter to law enforcement authorities for further investigation.
Apr
11, 2020 kmbc.com/kansas
Kansas:
Gov frustrated with Corizon after prisoners riot
KS
Corrections Department investigating Lansing prison riot Prisoners complain
of lack of health care due to COVID-19. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has promised
a complete investigation into Thursday’s riot at the Lansing Correctional
Facility. Two inmates had minor injuries after a group of inmates started
destroying property on their way back to cells from the showers. Kansas
Department of Corrections officers retreated from the C-block cell, holding
169 medium security inmates just after 3 p.m. No staff members received
injuries. A prison riot team entered the facility and gained control of the
prisoners around 11 p.m. Staff gave the all-clear around 2 a.m. Friday morning,
according to Kelly. "We will learn from this," the governor said at
a Friday afternoon news conference in Topeka. "Rest assured, my
administration will hold those responsible for the disturbance to account, and put in place any additional steps that are
necessary to ensure that safety and order is maintained." Video from
prisoners taken on cellphones inside the facility circulated widely on the
internet. The video showed destroyed chairs, windows, and offices, with
prisoners complaining about the lack of health care due to the COVID-19
pandemic. Twelve inmates and 16 staff members have tested positive for
COVID-19 at the facility. Kelly said she was also frustrated with the health
care provided by the state’s contractor Corizon Correctional Healthcare. On
Friday, she directed her chief of staff to send a letter to Corizon’s CEO
regarding the healthcare in the facility. Corizon and the state of Kansas
have been involved in a battle over the prison healthcare contract with the
state. Corizon Health CEO James Hyman released the following statement:
"Corizon is committed to protecting the health and well-being of staff
and inmates at all KDOC correctional facilities. Planning for
COVID-19-related health issues began at the beginning of February despite
KDOC’s reluctance to participate in emergency preparedness exercises, which
have proven to be a key to successful management in other states. We will
continue to monitor and address this constantly evolving landscape."
Feb 16, 2019 lmtonline.com
Governor says Kansas was 'hoodwinked' on new state prison
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas was "hoodwinked" into hiring a
private company to build a new prison based on a promise that the new lockup
would require significantly less staff and the savings could be used to pay
for the project, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said Friday. Kelly's comment
during an Associated Press interview comes as her corrections secretary
questions whether the staff savings will materialize because of what he sees
as a less-than-ideal prison design. The new prison is under construction in
Lansing, in the Kansas City area, and due to open early next year. Former
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback pushed the project as a way to replace the
deteriorating prison in Lansing with no additional net cost to the state.
Legislative leaders gave the final go-ahead for the project in January 2018,
after Brownback's administration assured lawmakers that the new prison could
run safety with 46 percent fewer employees. Interim Corrections Secretary
Roger Werholtz, a Kelly appointee, is now telling
legislators that the projections may have been too optimistic. "I
doubted at the time that they could really safely reduce staff at the numbers
that they were talking about, so this comes as no surprise to me," Kelly
said Friday. Kansas is buying the new, 2,432-bed prison over 20
years through a lease with its contractor, Tennessee-based CoreCivic Inc., the nation's largest private prison
company. The total cost is about $360 million, but Brownback's administration
calculated that savings in staffing costs would cover lease payments. "CoreCivic is on-track to deliver to the state of Kansas a
desperately needed replacement for a Civil War-era prison facility that is
currently unsafe for staff and inmates alike," company spokesman Steve
Owen said. Kelly, a veteran state senator before being elected governor last
year, had been publicly skeptical of the project. "We were just, you
know, hoodwinked, I think," Kelly said. "I was not." Parts of
the existing Lansing prison date to the 1860s and feature long rows of tiered
cells with bad sight lines, but even newer parts built in the 1980s were
poorly designed, corrections officials said. Plans for the new prison call
for two large cell houses that modernize that traditional design. But cells
still will be arranged in rows, rather than in a series of square or
triangular pods around a central officers' station to give employees a view
of every cell. House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., an
Olathe Republican, said the project was "thoroughly vetted." The
Department of Corrections received the final go-ahead for the project 11
months after then-Secretary Joe Norwood announced he was pursuing it, and the
Republican-controlled Legislature required several rounds of review. "We
know we need more prison space and we need to find a better way to do this
for the long-term and this project was one that fit that mold," Ryckman said. "It needs to be reviewed, but the idea
and the concept seem pretty solid." Owen, the company spokesman, said
the design has been developed "in close consultation" with the
department to "provide a state-of-the-art facility with enhanced safety
and security as well as programming space." Werholtz,
who served as corrections secretary from 2002 through 2010, returned the job
last month when Kelly took office. About two weeks later, he called the new
prison's design "certainly not optimal" and told one legislative
committee, "I'm not thrilled." He also said during an Associated
Press interview this week that the new prison will be a significant
improvement over the existing one. Owen said the modern prison allows more
efficient staffing "while greatly improving the quality of life"
for inmates and staff. And Werholtz and the
department's capital improvements director, Mike Gaito,
also said the design probably was the best option for the Lansing site. They
said level space at the site is too small for a pod design because the state
can't tear down the existing prison. They said picking a new site — in
Lansing or another community — likely would add tens of millions of dollars
to the cost. Werholtz acknowledged that the
department won't know for sure how many employees will be needed to run the
prison safety until construction is further along later this year.
Brownback's administration projected that staffing with the new prison could
drop to 371 employees from 682. "It probably is more efficient than the
existing one, but I think our question is, is it as efficient as has been
promised, since it's going to be paid for by staff savings?" Werholtz said. "I think they may have been a little
aggressive in the savings that were projected."
Mar 8, 2018 cjonline.com
Kansas Senate GOP, Democrats embrace bill limiting privatization at state
prisons
A rare exhibition of Senate bipartisanship Wednesday led to a committee’s
prompt approval of a bill to prohibit outsourcing of personnel management
operations at state prison facilities.
Motivation for the
change reflected apprehension about approval of a $362 million contract with CoreCivic, a Tennessee company that builds and operates
private prisons, to construct and maintain for 20 years a new Lansing
Correctional Facility. Under the contract, the Kansas Department of
Corrections would retain supervision of corrections officers, wardens and
other personnel. Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning and Senate Minority
Leader Anthony Hensley co-sponsored Senate Bill 328 to prohibit the private
company from subsequently being granted power to take over personnel
operations at Kansas adult and juvenile facilities. The limitation wouldn’t
apply to contracting for food, medical or consulting services. “The
legislative intent is not to prohibit normal operating services to be
contracted out to the private sector,” said Denning, a Republican from
Overland Park. “Rather, it narrowly prohibits Lansing prison security,
including the supervision of inmates by corrections officers and the warden,
from being privatized.” Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said the legislation
endorsed by the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee was based on
concern about the record of private prison companies being hit with lawsuits
and complaints. Issues included chronic under-staffing, hiring of unqualified
officers, high turnover and inadequate medical and education programs, he
said. “While we have contracted out the construction of that facility,”
Hensley said, “we need to ensure that the department remains in the business
of managing and operating our own prisons. We should not turn over the
day-to-day operations to a private entity.” No one testified against the
Senate bill, which was approved on a voice vote without the standard 24-hour
delay after a hearing. In January, then-Gov. Sam Brownback and a coalition of
top House and Senate Republicans, including Denning, approved a 20-year, $362
million contract for construction of the new prison at Lansing. Hensley and
another Democrat on the State Finance Council voted against the lease-to-own
contract developed by KDOC and CoreCivic. Lobbyists
with close personal relationships with Brownback were hired by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of
America, to secure the State Finance Council’s approval. The prison at
Lansing would have 1,900 maximum- and minimum-security beds and 500
minimum-security beds. Introduction of a modern prison is expected to reduce
the number of corrections officers at Lansing from 680 to fewer than 400.
Robert Choromanski, executive director of the
Kansas Organization of State Employees, said the union supported the Senate
bill because it would clearly prohibit outsourcing or privatization of
management operations at state corrections facilities. He said KOSE had many
officers, counselors, maintenance specialists and administrative assistants
who “do a fine job of making the state prison facilities run in a
professional manner under trying circumstances working long hours for little
pay.”
January 21, 2018 kansascity.com
What is $2 billion buying Kansas and Missouri in prison health care? Few
people know
Shermaine Walker’s son died of a rare fungal
brain infection last year in a Kansas prison, and since then she’s been
trying to find out whether the prison’s private health care contractor could
have stopped it. That same contractor, Corizon Health, oversees inmate care
in Missouri prisons. A state legislator there contends Corizon staff
misdiagnosed his uncle’s cancer. He’s also asking how that happened.
Corizon’s contracts with the corrections departments of Kansas and Missouri
are worth almost $2 billion combined over 10 years — yet there’s little
transparency about how that money is being spent. “In my time I’ve not
experienced a specific report in terms of Corizon or their performance in
their contracts,” said Kansas Rep. Russ Jennings, a Republican from Lakin who
is chairman of the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.
Jennings said that’s not unusual for state contractors, but Corizon is not a
run-of-the-mill vendor. As the largest for-profit prison health care provider
in the country, Corizon is a lightning-rod for criticism from prisoners,
their family members, the American Civil Liberties Union and others who say
it takes public money and provides little care. All in an effort, they say,
to maximize its profits. Hundreds of inmates in Missouri and Kansas have
filed suits against the company alleging substandard care. Susan Lawrence, a
physician from California and expert witness in correctional medical malpractice
cases, said Corizon, like most prison health care companies, has a bad
reputation. “I have never heard of one that people say, ‘You know, they do a
really, really good job,’ ” Lawrence said. “They’re private, their goal is to
make money, so they put policies in place that aren’t necessarily (intended)
to benefit the patient,” she said. The company says they’re providing
high-level care in difficult environments, and for every lawsuit there are
more inmates satisfied with their care. “Reporting about correctional health
care often focuses on a single patient and that patient’s allegation of poor
care,” Corizon spokeswoman Martha Harbin said via email. “I would be happy to
provide you with a file containing the many, many cards and notes we have received
from patients.” But only a few people outside of the prisons know what’s
going on inside the infirmaries. The Kansas Department of Corrections, or
KDOC, has a small clinical team from the University of Kansas Medical Center
reviewing Corizon’s work. And the department collects some data on services
provided and medical outcomes. The Missouri Department of Corrections does
not. Neither state produced any data in response to requests from The Star.
Both state contracts have minimum staffing requirements for Corizon set in
the contracts and the Kansas contract has financial penalties if Corizon does
not meet certain performance benchmarks. But KDOC did not respond when asked
what, if any, penalties it had handed down. An open records request for that
information is pending. Missouri’s contract has no performance penalties or
bonuses. Karen Pojmann, the communications director
for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said Corizon gives no annual
report to the department and there’s no way for the department to provide
data on inmate health outcomes. “Part of the challenge is that our database
system is antiquated and it’s very hard to generate those types of reports,” Pojmann said. Karen Russo, a consultant for families of
inmates, has for decades studied both Corizon and its previous iteration as
Correctional Medical Services. The company changed its name after merging
with another prison health care provider in 2011. Russo, the founder of the
Wrongful Death and Injury Institute in Kansas City, said the company has a
checkered past that state leaders ignore because contracting out provides
them some insulation from lawsuits. “(Legislators) don’t do anything and this
has been going on since 1975,” Russo said. “I could take an article from
1975, I could square it up with 2017, change the date and the numbers and the
names and that’s it. ... There’s no accountability.” But Corizon is now
coming under more scrutiny in both Kansas and Missouri. In response to Shermaine Walker’s story about her son’s brain infection
death, Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley from Topeka said the
state should consider not renewing the company’s contract when it comes up in
July 2019. Missourinet, an online news consortium
of radio stations, reported in February that some Democrats in the Missouri
Legislature are also having second thoughts about Corizon. They include
Missouri Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., who said Corizon staff misdiagnosed his
uncle’s prostate cancer as ulcers and his uncle died shortly after leaving
prison. Franks didn’t respond to an interview request. Absent public data,
it’s hard to know how Corizon is doing beyond anecdotes — positive ones
provided by the company and negative ones from people like Walker, Franks and
the inmates themselves. In Kansas and Missouri, 283 medical malpractice
lawsuits have been filed against Corizon since 2011, including one brought by
Walker that’s still pending. Walker, from Wichita, says her son broke down
physically and mentally, eventually drinking his own urine, while the infection
ate away at him over months in the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. “It was
something to see this happening and know nobody was helping him,” Walker
said. “It was unbelievable.” Corizon has said it sympathizes with Walker, but
can’t release more details about her son’s case because of patient privacy
laws. Harbin, the Corizon spokeswoman, said the number of suits filed against
the company is not high, given that the company’s employees had millions of
patient visits over that time period. “Lawsuits are a fact of life among
doctors in the United States and even more so when you consider the highly
litigious nature of corrections,” Harbin said via email. “The presence of a
lawsuit is not necessarily indicative of any wrongdoing or the merits of the
case, and the statistics bear this out.” Harbin said less than 10 percent of
the concluded suits resulted in any kind of settlement. The remaining 90
percent resulted in a verdict in Corizon’s favor, were dismissed, or were
administratively closed. Harbin also provided copies of a dozen praise-filled
notes, including one from a Lansing Correctional Facility inmate who said the
Corizon staff compassionately removed a lump from his shoulder under local
anesthesia and then sent it to a lab for testing and cleaned the wound for 12
days after. But Russo said the lawsuits represent a small sample of inmate
complaints, because prisoners can’t file suit until they’ve gone through the
corrections department’s grievance process. She said the suits are easy for
Corizon to swat down because it’s hard for prisoners to keep up with
paperwork deadlines and court fees unless they get court-appointed legal
counsel. Russo also said even most attorneys don’t understand the challenge
of taking on a health care provider that has control of all
of a patients’ health records and can prevent the patient from seeking
a second opinion. “These cases are not straight-line medical malpractice
cases,” Russo said. “They are much more complex.” The federal suits against
the company brought by inmates in Kansas and Missouri contain a range of
complaints, from the common to the bizarre. Multiple suits claim that Corizon
employees classified medical conditions as “cosmetic” in order to avoid
providing care, including one by Philip Vitello who said staff at the
Missouri state prison in St. Joseph denied him surgery to remove a tumor on
his shoulder. Vitello was not appointed counsel, but a magistrate judge ruled
last month that Michael Toney, a prisoner at the Kansas state prison in El
Dorado, should be. He’s now being represented by a Wichita law firm. Toney’s
suit alleges that he suffered from bloody, painful bowel movements for months
while Corizon staff members did nothing but prescribe him an ineffective
hemorrhoid cream. When they finally referred him to a doctor outside the
prison system, that doctor diagnosed him with “rectal fissures” that would
require surgery. By that point Toney said his condition had gotten so painful
that he requested a liquid diet because “to plaintiff, losing 40 pounds is
better than passing a solid stool.” But Corizon still didn’t get him the
surgery. Lawrence, the physician and expert witness, said Toney’s claims
sound frighteningly plausible to her. Lawrence spent three years working for
another for-profit prison health care provider in federal immigration
detention centers. She said at one facility an inmate came to her saying he
had been complaining to the nursing staff about his rectal bleeding for more
than a year. “So I did a physical exam and he had a rock-hard liver due to metastasization,” Lawrence said. “He had cancer. He had
rectal cancer. ... When he pulled up his shirt you could see the outline of
his liver. I had never seen anything like it.” Lawrence said the nursing
staff had not only ignored the man’s complaints, they had also recorded him
exercising in the prison yard, to try and build a case against him needing
care. “They had videotaped him working out and said ‘How can he possibly have
terminal cancer?’ Well, people can,” Lawrence said. “(But) it was the
attitude of a lot of providers that they were just malingering.” The U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners must be provided health care, and
Kansas and Missouri, along with many other states, privatized that
responsibility decades ago. But some states take a different approach. A
study published in 2013 by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the MacArthur
Foundation found that when New Jersey and Connecticut contracted directly
with their state university medical centers to provide prison health care it
resulted in improvements in several areas, as well as cost savings that went
back to the states. Harbin said those results haven’t been duplicated
elsewhere. “There is enough evidence of challenges in state and
university-run prison health services (Texas, California) to demonstrate that
these are not superior systems of care,” Harbin said via email. The same Pew
study quoted Viola Riggin, KDOC’s director of
health care services, as saying that Kansas’ system of privatized care backed
up by oversight from the University of Kansas Department of Family Medicine
provides the best of both worlds. “The key is oversight, and our data
collection system allows me to track which inmate did not receive a physical
exam, and if not, why not,” Riggin told Pew and
MacArthur. KDOC did not make Riggin available for
an interview for this story. A KU Medical Center spokeswoman said the
center’s role is to review Corizon’s staffing levels and staff credentials,
check inmate health care grievances that reach the corrections secretary
level and look into all inmate deaths. Missouri used to have an oversight
contract with Jo Riggs, a nursing professor at the University of Central
Missouri. Riggs said her work was initially funded through a state grant but
about three years ago the state dropped the grant and renegotiated its
contract so Corizon would pay her instead. “I have found that they met or
exceeded the performance expectations on most of the indicators I was
measuring,” Riggs said. Riggs said she’s taking time off from the project in
2018. Harbin said Corizon is looking for a replacement and in the meantime is
still vetted by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, an
accreditation group. Jennings, the chairman of the Kansas House’s corrections
committee, said there’s another step his state could consider to add more
oversight of Corizon. The former head of the state’s juvenile justice
administration, Jennings served on a “corrections ombudsman’s board” in the
1980s that had the authority to investigate inmate and prison staff
complaints. He said the board was disbanded long ago, but the legislature
could consider bringing it back. “It might be something to revisit and have a
conversation about,” Jennings said.
Feb
8, 2018 cjonline.com
Kansas Senate GOP, Democrats embrace bill limiting privatization at state
prisons
A rare exhibition of Senate bipartisanship Wednesday led to a committee’s
prompt approval of a bill to prohibit outsourcing of personnel management
operations at state prison facilities. Motivation for the change reflected
apprehension about approval of a $362 million contract with CoreCivic, a Tennessee company that builds and operates
private prisons, to construct and maintain for 20 years a new Lansing
Correctional Facility. Under the contract, the Kansas Department of
Corrections would retain supervision of corrections officers, wardens and
other personnel. Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning and Senate Minority
Leader Anthony Hensley co-sponsored Senate Bill 328 to prohibit the private
company from subsequently being granted power to take over personnel
operations at Kansas adult and juvenile facilities. The limitation wouldn’t
apply to contracting for food, medical or consulting services. “The
legislative intent is not to prohibit normal operating services to be
contracted out to the private sector,” said Denning, a Republican from
Overland Park. “Rather, it narrowly prohibits Lansing prison security,
including the supervision of inmates by corrections officers and the warden,
from being privatized.” Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said the legislation
endorsed by the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee was based on
concern about the record of private prison companies being hit with lawsuits
and complaints. Issues included chronic under-staffing, hiring of unqualified
officers, high turnover and inadequate medical and education programs, he
said. “While we have contracted out the construction of that facility,”
Hensley said, “we need to ensure that the department remains in the business
of managing and operating our own prisons. We should not turn over the
day-to-day operations to a private entity.” No one testified against the
Senate bill, which was approved on a voice vote without the standard 24-hour
delay after a hearing. In January, then-Gov. Sam Brownback and a coalition of
top House and Senate Republicans, including Denning, approved a 20-year, $362
million contract for construction of the new prison at Lansing. Hensley and
another Democrat on the State Finance Council voted against the lease-to-own
contract developed by KDOC and CoreCivic. Lobbyists
with close personal relationships with Brownback were hired by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of
America, to secure the State Finance Council’s approval. The prison at
Lansing would have 1,900 maximum- and minimum-security beds and 500
minimum-security beds. Introduction of a modern prison is expected to reduce
the number of corrections officers at Lansing from 680 to fewer than 400.
Robert Choromanski, executive director of the Kansas
Organization of State Employees, said the union supported the Senate bill
because it would clearly prohibit outsourcing or privatization of management
operations at state corrections facilities. He said KOSE had many officers,
counselors, maintenance specialists and administrative assistants who “do a
fine job of making the state prison facilities run in a professional manner
under trying circumstances working long hours for little pay.” Cook told MTN News Thursday that he believes the entire $30 million, or
more, could ultimately be used to offset human-service budget cuts that the
administration is preparing to make, to balance the budget. Bullock, however,
said Tuesday he doesn’t see how a new contract would yield any more than $15
million to $17 million, under the law passed by Republicans – and that it’s
just bad business to be pressured into extending a contract that may not be
needed. “I want to make sure when we go forward, as we look at Shelby, that
it is a good deal for Montanans,” he told MTN News. Bullock said his
administration is taking steps to appraise the value of the prison and assess
how it fits into the state prison system, in the coming years. “Without any
sort of an assessment of our needs going forward, without an appraisal to say
what this (prison) is worth – I think it’s premature to say, `Here’s what we
should do with it.’” CoreCivic didn’t respond to a
request for comment, or questions about whether it’s been negotiating with
the governor. Cook said he sees no scenario where the Shelby prison won’t be
needed for years into the future – and that if the governor doesn’t act, the
money will stay with CoreCivic.
Jan 5, 2018 ljworld.com
State Finance Council delays decision on Lansing prison project; questions
over private contractor persist
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback and top legislative leaders agreed Thursday
to delay for two weeks a decision on whether to approve a 20-year, $300
million contract to build a new prison facility at Lansing. In a meeting of
the State Finance Council, which is made up of the governor and top leaders
from both chambers, Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, made
a motion to table the decision until Jan. 18, citing concerns that key
details of the proposed contract still have not been finalized. “I don’t want
to have to ask forgiveness for this,” Denning said, noting other major
contracts that the Legislature has had to fix, including the once-proposed
demolition of the Docking State Office Building. “If I make a bad decision,
then I want to own it. But I don’t want to make a decision today until both
sides have agreed to the lease buy-back agreement, and I’ve had a chance to
look at it.” Denning was referring to a provision in the contract detailing
the terms under which the private prison company selected for the project, CoreCivic, would transfer ownership of the facility back
to the state of Kansas at the end of the lease. The Department of Corrections
is proposing to contract with a private prison company, CoreCivic,
to build the prison and lease it back to the state after 20 years. The state
would still be responsible for staffing and operating the prison, but CoreCivic would be responsible for all maintenance and
repairs during the term of the lease. The plan calls for demolishing the medium
security unit at the prison, which was built in the 1980s, and building a new
facility that would house both medium and maximum security prisoners, who are
now housed in the original prison building that dates back to the Civil War
era. Other members of the committee expressed concerns about the Department
of Corrections’ plans to reduce staffing, including mental health counselors,
once the new, more modern facility is built. Department of Corrections
Secretary Joe Norwood said the project would save the state about $23 million
over the term of the lease, most of which would come from personnel costs. He
said it currently takes 682 full-time equivalent employees to staff the
prison. He said that could be cut to 371 with a new facility. That’s because the
original 1860s-era building, which houses the maximum security unit, was
designed inefficiently by modern standards and thus requires more
correctional officers because they don’t have clear lines of sight to monitor
an entire cell block, Corrections officials have said. Norwood said with a
new, combined facility, his agency could consolidate things like food service
and medical care into a single unit instead of having separate units at each
of the two main buildings. But Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Wichita, who chairs the
Senate budget committee, said she was concerned about cutbacks in other
areas, including mental health staff, which would be reduced from 53 to 35
positions. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said he was
concerned that CoreCivic has been the target of
numerous lawsuits in the past, some having to do with inadequate staffing at
the private prisons the company runs, as well as a Department of Justice
probe into the company’s staffing system. Norwood said that under the proposed
contract, staffing would still be in the hands of the agency, and the
Legislature, which approves the agency’s budget. He added that the staffing
plan is based on National Institute of Corrections standards and that it had
been reviewed by independent corrections experts from Indiana. “But it’s a
similar model, that is that we’re going to be using technology rather than
people, and there were concerns expressed by the Department of Justice about
that model,” Ward said. In the budget bill that lawmakers passed last year, a
provision was inserted giving the Department of Corrections authority to
enter into a lease-purchase contract for a new facility at Lansing, as long
as it was reviewed by the Joint Committee on State Building Construction and
approved by the State Finance Council. But the plan has been controversial
since its inception. A Legislative Post Audit review last year concluded that
the facility could be built at a lower cost by issuing bonds instead of a
lease-purchase agreement. The Department of Corrections, however, rejected
that idea, saying CoreCivic was able to secure
private financing at interest rates competitive with the going rate for state
bonds. In an earlier meeting of the joint building committee, some members
suggested the agency should consider other communities for the prison, and
open up the site selection process to competitive proposals from different
communities, a process the agency has used in the past when building new
prisons. Also at that meeting in November, the committee voted to recommend
that the agency start over by soliciting new proposals with a wider array of
financing options. Norwood, however, said the agency chose not to follow that
recommendation because the joint committee is only set up as an advisory panel.
Brownback said at the end of the meeting that the Finance Council will meet
once more in about a week to receive answers to questions that lawmakers
still have. Then it will meet again Jan. 18 for an up or down vote on the
project.
Aug 1, 2017 cjonline.com
State audit contradicts Dept. of Corrections on cost of Lansing
lease-purchase plan
A legislative audit released Monday claims that the Kansas Department of
Corrections missed “key variables” and relied on “inconsistent assumptions”
that tended to favor a more expensive method of replacing the state’s largest
and oldest prison. According to the audit, the Department of Corrections
underestimated the cost of rebuilding Lansing Correctional Facility through a
lease-purchase agreement, a contract that allows a private company to build
the prison and then lease it back to the state until the state purchases it.
That option would likely be scrapped because of the results of the audit,
said J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican and chair of
the transportation and public safety budget committee. The audit says a
preliminary estimate from KDOC placed the project cost at $140 million over
20 years. The total cost predicted by KDOC was $155 million, but the audit
report contends that it would cost $206 million. Auditors found that the best
option would be for the state to issue bonds to build the prison and contract
with a company for its maintenance. “These results differ from KDOC’s
preliminary estimates, which were missing key variables and used inconsistent
assumptions that tended to favor a lease-purchase option,” the audit says.
KDOC is now in the process of receiving bids to build the prison in response
to a request for proposals that it issued in April, according to the audit.
Bids are due Friday. KDOC Secretary Joe Norwood said in a letter in response
to the audit that the department would accept auditors’ help picking a bidder
to contract with. The audit says the department failed to include in its cost
estimates the final price it would pay to buy back the prison at the end of
the lease, did not adjust prices over time, presented different construction
costs based on the ownership arrangement and left out what auditors found to
be the least expensive option. It said the least expensive option — building
the prison with bond money and contracting its maintenance — would cost $178
million over 20 years. KDOC did not dispute any of the findings of the audit,
according to a summary of the report. Rep. John Barker, an Abilene Republican
and chair of the Legislative Post Audit committee, said he thought the
Department of Corrections was receptive to the findings and that auditors
found costs KDOC overlooked. Rep. Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, said he thought the
department or administration had been leaning toward a lease-purchase option.
In an email, KDOC spokesman Todd Fertig said the
agency was “open to whichever funding option is best for the state.” He said
the real cost of the project would not be known until the state gets bids
from builders.
According to the audit, KDOC has claimed the project would not have a significant
impact on the state’s budget. The audit says the state could find savings by
combining maximum and medium security prisoners into one building and
reducing staff. Savings could also be realized with a more energy-efficient
building than the ones now at Lansing, including one built in the 1860s.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said he was
concerned reduced staffing would lead to more disciplinary problems, like
recent outbreaks at El Dorado Correctional Facility. “That concerns me
because we’ve seen what’s happened in El Dorado, where they’re understaffed,
they’ve had to work double shifts and we’ve had some real security problems
down there among the inmates,” Hensley said. Claeys,
however, said Lansing already requires a higher level of staffing because of
its age. A modern building, he said, would require staffing similar to that
at El Dorado, which is currently understaffed. Rebuilding Lansing, Claeys said, would help prevent uprisings at overcrowded
prisons like El Dorado Correctional Facility, which has seen several
incidents in recent weeks. He said the prison’s population has been rising
without any new space given to inmates, and it faces severe staffing
shortages. “I think having Lansing rebuilt certainly alleviates some of the
pressure on El Dorado,” Claeys said. Claeys said he had a proposal for the coming legislative
session to raise wages for correctional officers to help fill staffing
shortages. “We’re going to do something, and it should be a priority,” Barker
said. Claeys said the Legislature would go with a
plan “that’s the least expensive for taxpayers and gets us the result of a
modern, efficient prison facility at Lansing.” He said a provision included
in the budget lawmakers passed in June would ensure that a plan for the
prison gets approval from the Legislature.
Leavenworth Prison
Leavenworth
Detention Center,
Kansas
CCA
Jun
15, 2022 coffeeordie.com
A crackdown on corruption at US Penitentiary Leavenworth has netted
sentences for three correctional officers and a nurse.
Before
they were caught and fired, prison guards Janna Grier, 36, Jacqueline Sifuentes, 26, and Cheyonte
Harris, 29, plus nurse Jeane Arnette, 61, took
bribes to smuggle contraband into the Kansas penitentiary, including cell
phones, tobacco, lighters, and sometimes narcotics, often getting paid by
prisoners using Cash App, a money transfer program. Nicknamed "Wonder
Woman" by her family, Sifuentes is going
behind bars for 14 months. Grier will spend two years in a penitentiary.
Honorably discharged from the Kansas Army National Guard, Harris received a
20-month prison sentence. Arnette drew a six-month punishment. Their criminal
defense attorneys did not return Coffee or Die Magazine messages seeking
comment. The sentences also shine a light on problems that plagued the
troubled detention facility and its adjacent minimum-security prison camp,
which are located roughly 4 miles north of the military's infamous US
Disciplinary Barracks inside the US Army's Fort Leavenworth. US Penitentiary
Leavenworth is a federal prison run by a private company, CoreCivic.
In a sentencing memorandum penned by Eric Vernon, the attorney for Sifuentes, the facility was portrayed as reeling from
staffing woes, its correctional officers often saddled with poor training. Sifuentes was recruited out of Texas to shore up the
chronic staffing shortfall, Vernon wrote, given only a day's training on how
to subdue violent inmates, and then turned out to guard the convicts. She had
been promised a job monitoring surveillance cameras,
without any direct contact with the prison population, Vernon added. In
exchange for $800 in bribes in 2020, Sifuentes
smuggled into the prison four packages stuffed with methamphetamine, tobacco,
and marijuana, all wrapped in duct tape and left in a staff restroom for an
inmate to retrieve. Gary Stone, the attorney for Harris, wrote in his
memorandum that contraband, including K2 - a synthetic cannabinoid also
called "spice" - flowed through the prison unfettered.
"Inmates were in possession of prohibited items and sold and traded
things as currency on an open market," Stone wrote. "Her
supervisors ignored the conduct and most of the time, writing a report or
taking action was highly unusual." Stone wrote that one inmate became
"kind of a friend" - Harris denied an intimate relationship - who
spoke with her more than 100 times on the jail phone. The prisoner paid her
roughly $8,565 to smuggle into the prison tobacco and the weight loss
supplement Hydroxycut, although she initially
denied that when interrogated by the FBI. Arnette, the nurse, worked 13
months at Leavenworth between 2020 and 2021, receiving and sending out payments prisoners used to transact business inside the
penitentiary. She also smuggled into the facility tobacco, cell phones,
uninspected mail, and food. Grier admitted to authorities that she smuggled
tobacco and lighters into the prison, but she didn't realize the contraband
tucked into her bra included synthetic marijuana. Caught in the act of
bringing in contraband in August of 2020, she was fired but persisted in
trying to smuggle smokes and cell phones into the facility by recruiting
unnamed staffers to do the dirty work. One of them was an FBI informant. In
his sentencing memorandum, Grier's attorney, Thomas R. Telthorst,
urged the judge to give her probation, not jail time. She didn't have a
criminal record before her arrest, he argued, and would no longer have access
to the inmate who convinced her to smuggle contraband, so she wouldn't be
tempted to commit new crimes. But prosecutors blamed Grier's downfall on her
own decisions to consistently violate her duty to keep inmates and staff at
Leavenworth safe. They urged US District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree to put her
behind bars for at least two years. "Through her conduct, Grier
willingly exposed the inmates and staff at Leavenworth, as well as the
broader community, to the very dangers she was supposed to safeguard against,
and she actively undermined the prison environment, which is crucial to our
system of justice," wrote Rebecca M.Schuman
and Jacob R. Steiner, trial attorneys assigned to the Criminal Division of
the US Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section. "A meaningful
term of incarceration is required to promote respect for our anti-corruption
laws and to restore faith in our nation's law enforcement institutions."
The judge agreed with the prosecutors.
May
11, 2022 kansascity.com
'Send
a message': Prosecutors argue prison for former Leavenworth corrections
officer
Federal
prosecutors want a former correctional officer to spend up to 37 months behind
bars for smuggling contraband to inmates while she was employed at the CoreCivic detention facility in Leavenworth. In a
sentencing memorandum filed Monday, U.S. Attorneys Rebecca Schuman and Jacob
Steiner wrote that the crimes committed by 29-year-old Cheyonte
Harris "placed the lives of inmates and prison staff at risk" and
"diminished confidence in law enforcement." They contend Harris
deserves "a meaningful term of imprisonment" for abusing the public
trust. "The sentence in this case should be sufficiently serious to
deter future public officials from similarly putting their self-interest
above loyalty to the law and the safety of others," the prosecutors
wrote, adding that the sentence "should send a message that the job of a
corrections officer is one that requires integrity." Harris, of Raytown,
pleaded guilty in February to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and
smuggle contraband, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years in
prison. She admitted that she brought illegal items, including tobacco, to
inmates in the maximum-security prison. The case was investigated by the FBI.
According to court records, Harris received an estimated $8,565 in payments
through the electronic CashApp between January 2020
and June 2021 as bribes. Harris was regularly paid about $100 for each pack
of cigarettes she smuggled in for an incarcerated person, who then sold them
to other prisoners. That prisoner in turn received about $350 for each pack
sold, according to court records. Harris was also accused of making false
statements to FBI agents when she was interviewed in April 2021. She
allegedly told investigators that she did not have a Cash App account and
made changes to the account in an effort to conceal
the crime. Harris later admitted to taking bribes on 20 separate occasions,
court records show. In arguing for a sentence of probation, defense attorney
Gary D. Stone asked the court to consider that Harris has no criminal history
outside of traffic tickets and was enlisted with the Missouri National Guard
for six years. He also wrote that Harris worked in a "toxic"
environment as a correctional officer where prisoners openly violated the rules, alleging misconduct was frequently ignored by
prison supervisors. "The past year has been a nightmare for Cheyonte Harris," Stone wrote in the memo. "She
lost her job, she was arrested and interrogated, she lost the trust of many
friends as a result of her actions." Harris is one of six correctional
officers from CoreCivic, the nation's largest
private prison operator, who have faced federal charges within the past 7
months related to official misconduct at the Leavenworth facility. Others
include corrections officers and a prison nurse who was allegedly paid to
bring cell phones and tobacco products to inmates. A sentencing hearing for
Harris is scheduled to take place May 17 in the Kansas City, Kansas federal
courthouse.
Mar
2, 2022 kansas.com
Former
corrections officer accused of smuggling cell phones into Leavenworth prison
A
former corrections officer for the privately-run federal prison in
Leavenworth is accused of participating in a criminal conspiracy that
allegedly involved smuggling cell phones into the prison that were later sold
to prisoners. Angelica Grant, who was a CoreCivic
employee assigned to the Leavenworth Detention Center between May 2018 and
May 2020, is named in a criminal complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District
Court in Kansas City, Kansas, alleging a single felony count of conspiracy.
The charges state that by virtue of her position at the prison, Grant was a
public official. Grant is among several ex-Leavenworth prison guards who have
been accused of smuggling contraband into the privately-run federal prison.
In December, Willie Golden was charged with conspiracy. In September, Cheyonte Harris of Raytown and Jacqueline Sifuentes of Laredo, Texas, were indicted by a federal
grand jury on accusations they smuggled contraband into the prison. Golden,
Harris and Sifuentes pleaded guilty earlier this
year. According to the charging documents, the government alleges that Grant
conspired with others to receive bribes offered by prisoners to smuggle cell
phones and other contraband into the prison. An unnamed inmate used a phone
to communicate regularly with Grant and evade the monitoring of the prison's
telephone system, according to court documents. When Grant left the prison in
May 2020, she allegedly got another public official to smuggle contraband
into the prison for the inmate in exchange for money. Grant allegedly would
provide the other official cell phones disguised within fast food containers
and gave instructions how to smuggle them into the prison. Grant is accused
of paying the official in both cash and on Cash App, an app that allows users
to transfer money to one another. The inmate then could sell the cell phone
to other inmates, according to the court documents. Between February and May
of 2020, Grant allegedly purchased at least 20 cell phones for the official
to smuggle into the prison to the inmate on at least five occasions. Grant
allegedly received at least $500 for every two or three cell phones that were
smuggled inside. To facilitate the distribution of the contraband by the
inmate, Grant allegedly repeatedly used the app to send and receive at least
$42,426 in payments to and from other inmates and their associates, according
to court documents.
Dec
10, 2021 kansascity.com
Ex-Leavenworth
prison guard accused of smuggling tobacco, cell phones to prisoners
A
former corrections officer for the privately-run federal prison in
Leavenworth is accused of participating in a criminal conspiracy alongside
other officials that allegedly involved trafficking tobacco, marijuana and cell phones to prisoners. Willie Golden, an
employee assigned last year to the prison operated by CoreCivic,
is named in a criminal complaint filed this week in the U.S. District of
Kansas alleging a single felony count of conspiracy. Court papers detail at
least two other unnamed public officials accused of taking part in the
operation. Golden was placed on administrative leave and resigned before the
investigation concluded, CoreCivic spokesman
Matthew Davio said. Golden's
attorney has not responded to a request for comment. According to the
complaint, the government contends there is proof that the trafficking
operation ran from April through November 2020. It involved bribes offered by
prisoners to corrections officers for the smuggling of contraband from the
outside. Payments were allegedly made to correctional officers through Cash
App, a mobile service that supports financial transactions between account
holders. During his time as a correctional officer, Golden allegedly received
$7,370 for smuggling contraband to eight prisoners referred to in court
records under descriptors, such as "Inmate 1." The amounts ranged
from $50 to $2,000 apiece. Some of the Cash App payments included notes
describing what the transactions were for, court records state. For example,
one payment of $250 contained the note: "1 carton Newport long," the
complaint alleges. Another simply said "delivery." Some of those
payments were allegedly made to Golden by two public officials, possibly
correctional officers, whose names are undisclosed in court records. Those
totaled about $3,270 and are tied to specific dates where contraband was
allegedly smuggled into the prison. CoreCivic is
the country's biggest private prison operator, which works under a contract
through the U.S. Marshals Service. The prison is scheduled to close later
this month following an executive order by President Joe Biden directing
contracts with private prisons to close by the end of the year. Best holiday
recipes & dinner menu ideas Our guide to memorable meals and time-saving
recipes. Davio said its top priority is the safety
of staff and prisoners. "CoreCivic has a
zero-tolerance policy for the introduction of contraband into our facilities
and we will always work with our law enforcement partners to take swift
action to address this type of behavior," he said in a statement. In a
separate criminal indictment filed in September, two other former corrections
officers were charged with smuggling contraband into the Leavenworth
Detention Center. They are Cheyonte Harris, 29, of
Raytown, and Jacqueline Sifuentes, 25, of Laredo,
Texas.
Dec
7, 2021 kcur.org/news
Leavenworth
prison beset by reports of violence and mismanagement faces uncertain future
The
ACLU complained in a letter of reports of stabbings, understaffing and poor
security at the private prison. As CoreCivic's contract
expires this month, questions about its future remain. Prisoners awaiting
trial or sentencing at the troubled Leavenworth Detention Center should have
new confines by the end of the year. CoreCivic, a
publicly traded prison operator, owns the Leavenworth Detention Center, which
has been the center of a number of controversies in
recent years. They range from reports of poor conditions to authorities
eavesdropping on phone calls between prisoners and their attorneys. The U.S.
Marshals Service's (USMS) lease at the Leavenworth Detention Center ends on
Dec. 31 and won't be renewed. That comes after President Biden issued an
executive order early this year to curtail the Justice Department's use of
private prisons. Plans are underway to transfer the prisoners to another
government-run prison facility in Leavenworth. "Currently, the USMS and
BOP (Bureau of Prisons) are collaborating to transfer individuals from the
Leavenworth Detention Center to the nearby U.S. Penitentiary
Leavenworth," said Lynzey Donahue, a
spokeswoman for the USMS. "Preparations are underway to accommodate the
particular needs and rights of those individuals being transferred."
That leaves unanswered the question of what CoreCivic
will do with its Leavenworth facility. An NPR report earlier this year
speculated that it may be repurposed to house immigration detainees. The
Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have
responsibility over immigrant detainees and neither
is subject to Biden's executive order on private prisons. Currently,
immigration detainees are kept at the Chase County, Kansas, Detention Center,
about 130 miles southwest of Kansas City. Larry Sigler, the administrator for
the Chase County Detention Center, referred questions to the U.S. Marshals
Service. The U.S. Marshals Service did not directly address the immigration
detainee question in its response. A spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration
& Customs Enforcement (ICE) declined to comment on the record for this
story. Michael Sharma-Crawford, an immigration attorney in Kansas City, said
he understood ICE was unlikely to lease the Leavenworth Detention Center.
"There have been meetings of community and immigration folks, and based
on those meetings, it doesn't appear ICE is going to lease the CoreCivic facility at this time," Sharma-Crawford
said. Sharon Brett, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas, said she has heard
similar indications but has not been able to verify the information. She said
a Freedom of Information Act request sent by her office to ICE seeking
contracts or correspondence for the Leavenworth facility won't be fulfilled
for at least four months. "We can't get definitive answers from
anyone," Brett said The Kansas City region falls under a larger ICE
jurisdiction that's headquartered in Chicago. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
signed into law a ban on private contracts for immigration detention in that
state that goes into effect in 2022, causing some to wonder where detainees
in Illinois will end up. A spokesman for CoreCivic
also referred questions to the U.S. Marshals Service. CoreCivic,
whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, noted in a quarterly
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 9 that its lease
in Leavenworth with the U.S. Marshals Service was ending in December. It's
one of seven CoreCivic detention facilities used
primarily by the U.S. Marshals Service and whose terms would expire in the
next several years. CoreCivic said if those leases
are not renewed or the Biden executive order is expanded to apply to ICE, it
could have a "material adverse effect" on the company's business
and financial condition. CoreCivic's work on behalf
of the U.S. Marshals Service accounted for 23% of the company's total revenue
so far this year, according to SEC filings. Contracts with ICE represented
30% of CoreCivic's revenue. "It's a huge
business for them," Brett said. The quarterly SEC filing said that CoreCivic had entered negotiations with other government
partners to use the Leavenworth Detention Center, but it did not specify
which ones. The Leavenworth Detention Center is a 1,033-bed prison that
opened in 1992. The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General examined
the prison in a 2017 report that found a number of
management issues, including frequent understaffing and the placement of
three prisoners in cells designed to hold two. The inspector general
uncovered efforts to conceal the presence of a third inmate in the cells. The
inspector general also criticized the U.S. Marshals Service for its lack of
oversight of CoreCivic, including failing to reduce
payouts to the company when it understaffed the prison. A letter earlier this
year from ACLU chapters in several Midwest states to the White House and
Leavenworth County Commission urged both to stop using CoreCivic
in Leavenworth by the end of the year. The letter painted a grim picture of
conditions inside the prison, including prison doors that don't lock and
multiple incidents of stabbings this year alone. "Federal public
defenders with clients inside CoreCivic Leavenworth
report that stabbings like this are so routine recently that they are almost
unnoteworthy," the letter said. The prison has also been at the heart of
ongoing court proceedings brought by one-time inmates who claim their
privileged conversations with their attorneys were illegally recorded and, in
some cases, made available to federal prosecutors. The prisoners are seeking
to have their convictions vacated or their sentences thrown out.
Oct
1, 2021 kansascity.co
2
former officers accused of taking bribes, smuggling drugs into Leavenworth
Two
former correctional officers, including one living in Raytown, have been
charged with accepting bribes and smuggling drugs into the Leavenworth
Detention Center. Cheyonte Harris, 29, of Raytown,
and Jacqueline Sifuentes, 25, of Laredo, Texas,
were indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Kansas on accusations they
smuggled contraband into the privately-run federal prison in exchange for
payments. From January 2020 to May 2021, Harris brought tobacco to prisoners,
including one she communicated with on the facility's phone system, and
received money through Cash App, according to the indictment filed against
her. Court records allege that in January 2021, Harris was regularly paid
about $100 for each pack of cigarette she smuggled in for an incarcerated
person, who then sold them to other prisoners. That prisoner in turn received
about $350 for each pack sold, according to charging documents. Harris is
also accused of making "material misrepresentations" to the FBI
when she was interviewed in April, according to a Justice Department news
release. She falsely told agents she did not have a Cash App account and the
next day "changed the display name" of one of her accounts and
"removed a telephone number" from the account, according to court
records. Harris has pleaded not guilty. She faces up to 10 years in prison if
convicted of all charges. Sifuentes, who was
arrested Tuesday, is accused of using her role as a public official to
smuggle methamphetamine, marijuana and tobacco into
the maximum-security prison. Additional details of the accusations against Sifuentes were not immediately available. She faces up to
40 years in prison if convicted on all charges, which include providing
contraband to a prisoner. The Justice Department said the cases were part of
its efforts to "combat the dangerous and corrosive effects of prison
corruption."
Sep
11, 2021 npr.org
The DOJ Faces Pressure To Close A Prison Which May Dodge Executive Order
To Close
The
ACLU and federal public defenders are warning a private prison company may be
trying to avoid President Biden's executive order that bans new contracts
with most for-profit detention facilities. There's pressure on the Justice
Department to close a violence-prone detention center in Kansas. The
for-profit facility has been on 24-hour lockdown after a person died last
month. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE
JOHNSON, BYLINE: People locked up in the Leavenworth Detention Center have
been reaching out for help nearly every day. Sharon Brett is legal director
at the ACLU of Kansas.
SHARON
BRETT: What we know from people who are detained inside this facility is that
it's become increasingly violent, out of control and that people are fearing
for their lives every single day.
JOHNSON:
In February, corrections officers went to the hospital with severe injuries
after a detainee threw hot water and stabbed one woman and kicked another
one. In June, at least a half-dozen more detainees were stabbed. And in August,
a detainee named Scott Wilson suffered a brutal beating. He died two days
later. Since then, the facility's been in lockdown, only allowed out to
shower every three or four days.
MELODY
BRANNON: I have clients who have been in prison. They've done hard time in really difficult federal prisons around the country.
JOHNSON:
That's Melody Brannon. She's the federal public defender in Kansas.
BRANNON:
They are terrified to be at CoreCivic because they
know their lives are in danger every day.
JOHNSON:
The Leavenworth facility is run by CoreCivic, a
private prison company that has a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service. A
spokesman for the company says it's worked with the marshals for three
decades, and it says allegations by the ACLU and the public defenders are
designed to put political pressure on the Biden administration. During his
first week in office, the president signed an executive order phasing out
contracts with private prison operators. The federal contract with CoreCivic and Leavenworth is set to expire in December.
The company's CEO, Damon Hininger, told analysts
this summer CoreCivic is exploring its options.
DAMON
HININGER: We are also evaluating options for other government agencies.
JOHNSON:
Other government agencies - Biden's executive order on private prisons did
not apply to immigration facilities, and some people who work at CoreCivic say they think the Leavenworth property could
wind up housing immigration detainees. Lawyers in Kansas who are demanding
the facility shut down say it's got a bad track record. In 2017, the Justice
Department inspector general called out the place for staffing shortages.
Sharon Brett of the ACLU used to work at the Justice Department investigating
civil rights violations against people in prison and other institutions.
BRETT:
This is exactly the type of facility that DOJ would look at and potentially
investigate for constitutional violations.
JOHNSON:
Starting with, Brett says, conditions that are cruel and unusual under the
Eighth Amendment.
Sep
4, 2021 kansascity.com
ACLU
details violence at Leavenworth private prison, calls for closure by end of
year
A
legal battle continues in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., over
allegations that federal prosecutors wrongly used recorded phone calls of
attorneys talking to their clients held at Leavenworth Detention Center. A
series of violent incidents at a private prison in Leavenworth have prompted
civil liberties advocates in Kansas to urge President Joe Biden's
administration to ensure the prison closes by the end of the year. Earlier
this year, Biden issued an executive order directing contracts with private
prisons expire. CoreCivic in Leavenworth was
originally scheduled to close in December. But CoreCivic
is trying to remain open, either through a renewed contract with the U.S.
Marshal's Service or through a contract with Leavenworth County, according to
a letter from the ACLU of Kansas, the Kansas Federal Public Defender's office and other groups. The prison this year has had
several serious incidents, the letter said. In February, a resident was
beaten and suffered life-threatening injuries. At least seven people were
stabbed in May and June, and there were also two suicides during the spring.
Another detainee was sexually assaulted by an employee in May, the letter
said. Last month, a man was beaten by another resident and died. The letter
also said staff have locked people, including a man who uses a wheelchair, in
showers with running water as a form of punishment. "CoreCivic
Leavenworth has abdicated its constitutional responsibility to keep people
safe, and it has proven itself incapable of running its facility in a way
that protects the life and health of those who live and work there," the
letter read. Many of the incidents, the letter said, were a result of serious
staffing shortages. It called on the White House to intervene and ensure the
prison is closed by the end of this year. The letter was signed by several
groups including the District of Kansas Criminal Justice Act representative,
the ACLU of Missouri and the Western District of Missouri Federal Public
Defender. CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin said the allegations made in the letter were
"specious and sensationalized." Sign up for our newsletter for the
latest crime and courts headlines. In your inbox Monday-Saturday mornings.
"We vehemently deny that we would ever lock an individual in a shower
with running water as a form of punishment," he said in a statement to
The Star. He also said the May sexual assault allegation was investigated and
found unsubstantiated. "Our staff are trained and held to the highest
ethical standards," Gustin said. "Our
commitment to keeping those entrusted to our care safe and secure is our top
priority."
Aug
14, 2021 leavenworthtimes.com
Inmate dies after incident at Leavenworth Detention Center
The
CoreCivic Leavenworth Detention Center was placed
on lockdown following a battery at the facility that resulted in an inmate's
death, according to police and an official with the private corrections
company. The incident was reported Aug. 2 at the Leavenworth Detention
Center, 100 Highway Terrace. Maj. Dan Nicodemus, deputy chief of the
Leavenworth Police Department, said an inmate, Scott W. Wilson, was kicked, punched and struck with a tray. Wilson, 39, suffered a
broken rib and punctured lung. He died two days later. Nicodemus said another
inmate, a 28-year-old man, has been identified as a suspect. No formal
charges have been filed in court. County Attorney Todd Thompson said in an
email Friday that the case is still being investigated. "We've been in
contact with multiple agencies in regards to this
matter," he said. The suspect's name is being withheld until
confirmation of formal charges. The Leavenworth Detention Center houses
pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service. Ryan Gustin,
director of public affairs for CoreCivic, said in
an email that the Leavenworth Detention Center was placed on lockdown status
Aug. 3. He said the decision was made in consultation with the U.S. Marshals
Service. Gustin said the center can be placed on
lockdown status for a "variety of reasons to ensure safety, including
regular precautionary facility-wide security searches. It is never a punitive
measure. Rather, it's an important tool in maintaining safety and security
for inmates and staff." The lockdown was still in place Friday
afternoon. "While we don't have a specific date identified, the facility
management team continues to be in close dialogue with our government partner
to evaluate when to resume normal operations," Gustin
said. Earlier this year, officials with CoreCivic
met with Leavenworth County commissioners with a proposal for the county to
take over the operation of the Leavenworth Detention Center. The proposal was
in response to an executive order issued by President Joe Biden that
prohibits the U.S. Department of Justice from renewing contracts with
privately-run detention facilities. The Marshals
Service is an agency of the Justice Department. The current contract for the
Leavenworth Detention Center is set to expire at the end of the year.
Commissioners voted May 5 to notify the company that they were not interested
in pursuing the proposal. Among the concerns expressed by commissioners is
the potential for lawsuits that could be filed against the county as the
operator of the facility. Several days later, CoreCivic
Vice President Natasha Metcalf wrote a letter to County Administrator Mark
Loughry asking the commission to reconsider its decision.
May 16, 2021 leavenworthtimes.com
Kansas:
Corecivic wants second shot for county take-over
worth-county-commission-reconsider-decision
CoreCivic has asked
Leavenworth County commissioners to reconsider a decision they made regarding
the company's Leavenworth Detention Center. But the chairman of the County
Commission does not know if commissioners will revisit the issue. "I
just don't know the answer to that right now, but it would take a lot for me
to want to bring that back," Chairman Mike Smith said. Officials with CoreCivic, which operates private detention facilities,
have asked the county government to take over the operation of the
Leavenworth Detention Center. The center houses pretrial detainees for the
U.S. Marshals Service. The request from the Tennessee-based CoreCivic came after President Joe Biden issued an
executive order that prohibits the U.S. Department of Justice from renewing
contracts with privately-run detention facilities. The Marshals Service is an
agency of the Justice Department. The current contract for the Leavenworth Detention
Center is set to expire at the end of the year. CoreCivic
officials proposed the county could lease the facility from the company. And
staff members at the Leavenworth Detention Center could become employees of
the county. Commissioners voted May 5 to notify the company that they are not
interested in pursuing the proposal. Among the concerns expressed by
commissioners is the potential for lawsuits that could be filed against the
county as the operator of the facility. Following the commission's decision, CoreCivic Vice President Natasha Metcalf sent a letter to
County Administrator Mark Loughry. The letter, dated May 11, asks the
commission to reconsider its decision and "notify the (U.S. Marshals
Service) of its interest in engaging in discussions to more fully understand
the opportunity. An expression of interest would not obligate the County or
the USMS to proceed with the execution of a contract." Metcalf stated CoreCivic is willing to dedicate additional resources to
"facilitate further exploration of the new contract structure by the
County." This includes appointing Joseph Norwood, former secretary of
the Kansas Department of Corrections, to serve as a liaison between the
company and the county. Smith said he hates to see the loss of the Leavenworth
Detention Center's 175 jobs. But the County Commission chairman said the
potential for lawsuits in federal court remain a concern for him. Smith also
expressed concern that a contract between the county and a federal agency may
be adversely impacted by future changes in the same way that CoreCivic has been impacted by the president's executive
order. He also expressed concern about the county being accountable for the
management of the center including the payroll and employee benefits.
May
6, 2021 leavenworthtimes.com
Commissioners
vote against taking over private prison
It
appears the Leavenworth County government will not be taking over a private
prison. Commissioners voted Wednesday to notify CoreCivic
of their decision not to move forward with a proposal from the company. “I
don’t see any way we can do this,” Commissioner Doug Smith said. Leavenworth
Detention Center. CoreCivic officials had proposed
the county take over the operation of the company’s Leavenworth Detention
Center, which houses pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service.
Company officials made the proposal after President Joe Biden issued an
executive order in January that prohibits the U.S. attorney general from
renewing Department of Justice contracts with privately-operated detention
facilities. The U.S. Marshals Service is an agency of the Justice Department.
CoreCivic officials proposed the county seek a
contract with the U.S. Marshals Service in order to
keep the Leavenworth Detention Center in operation. Under the proposal, the
county would lease the facility from CoreCivic, and
the staff at the center would be employed through the county. Officials with
the Tennessee-based company made the proposal to county commissioners two
weeks ago. During a work session last week, Commission Chairman Mike Smith
said he wanted to know the potential financial benefit to the county for
operating the facility. County Administrator Mark Loughry said Wednesday that
CoreCivic officials told him between 3% and 6% of
the money paid to the county under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service
could be over and above operational costs. He said this would equate to
between $1 million and $2 million. But he said between $1 million and $1.5
million would probably be a more realistic figure. Loughry said he also asked
CoreCivic officials why they approached the county
instead of the state government. “Really, it comes down to the timeline and
the bureaucracy that they would have to go through at the state level,”
Loughry said. He said CoreCivic officials were
worried they would not have enough time to complete a deal with the state. He
said the company also has experience working with county governments across
the country. Commissioner Mike Stieben asked County
Counselor David Van Parys if there is a way to determine the potential
liability to the county. Van Parys said there are ways to come up with a
number such as checking the current lawsuits filed against the Leavenworth
Detention Center. But he said the potential liability to the county is somewhat
unknown. Mike Smith said the potential liability is one of the main things
that concerned him. Commissioner Jeff Culbertson said liability was the
issue. Culbertson said he did not think the proposal from CoreCivic
would work out. He suggested the deal may have worked if there was a greater
financial benefit to the county. Doug Smith made a motion to authorize
Loughry to inform CoreCivic that the commissioners
are not interested in taking over the Leavenworth Detention Center. Stieben provided a second to the motion. The motion was
approved 4-0. Commissioner Vicky Kaaz was absent.
“I’m hoping they can come up with another solution,” Mike Smith said. Stieben noted that CoreCivic is
a large taxpayer in the county and the facility employs 175 people. “Elections
have consequences,” he said.
May
1, 2021 PCWG leavenworthtimes.com
Commissioners
discuss CoreCivic proposal
The
chairman of the Leavenworth County Commission wants to know the potential
financial benefit if the county government takes over a private prison. “What
is the benefit to the county for doing this?” Chairman Mike Smith said. He and the other members of the County
Commission met Thursday for a work session to discuss a proposal from CoreCivic. CoreCivic operates
the Leavenworth Detention Center, a private prison that houses pretrial
detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service. Representatives of the
Tennessee-based CoreCivic met with commissioners
last week. The company officials proposed the county take over operations of
the Leavenworth facility. Under the proposal, the county would lease the
property from CoreCivic. The center’s 175 employees
would become county employees. CoreCivic could
provide support services to assist the county with the operation of the
facility. The proposal comes in response to an executive order signed in
January by President Joe Biden. The order states the U.S. attorney general
“shall not renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated
criminal detention facilities.” The U.S. Marshals Service is an agency of the
Justice Department. Damon Hininger, president and CEO of CoreCivic,
told county commissioners last week that the company’s contract with the
Marshals for the Leavenworth Detention Center is set to expire at the end of
the year. County Administrator Mark Loughry said the purpose of Thursday’s
work session was for commissioners to discuss the risks and rewards of the
proposal. “At the end of the day, this is a huge policy decision,” he told
commissioners. Smith asked about the potential impact on the county’s workman
compensation insurance. “That’s definitely a concern,” Loughry said. He said
adding employees at the Leavenworth Detention Center to the county’s payroll
could increase premiums for the county across the board. He said the cost of
liability insurance also could increase. “That concerns me more than a lot of
the other issues,” he said. Loughry said the county could be targeted for
lawsuits by inmates at the facility. Smith said he had concerns about the
rules being changed after the county has taken over the facility.
Commissioner Vicky Kaaz said she wanted to know
what the county’s federal representatives are doing to provide protections to
the county if the county takes over the facility. Thursday’s meeting was
attended by Jason Osterhaus, who is a member of U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran’s
staff. Commissioner Doug Smith questioned why the Kansas Department of
Corrections would not take over the CoreCivic
facility. Sheriff Andy Dedeke, who attended
Thursday’s work session, said he believes new state legislation would be
required in order for the Department of Corrections
to take over the facility. Dedeke said the Marshals
likely would try to utilize multiple smaller jail facilities to house the
inmates if the Leavenworth Detention Center closes. Dedeke
said most jails probably already are near capacity, especially during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioner Jeff Culbertson expressed concern about the
potential loss of property tax revenue to the county if the Leavenworth
Detention Center closes. “We’re going to lose our biggest taxpayer,” he said.
He said other taxpayers in the county would have to make up the difference.
“If we lose this, it’s going to be huge,” he said. Commissioner Mike Stieben said commissioners should get more answers
regarding the proposal. Stieben also said he
believes the president’s executive order will make people less safe. “Because
you’re going to have more criminals out on the street,” he said. Mike Smith
said, “There has to be some benefit to the county if we’re going to take this
over.” “Basically, it’s going to come down to dollars,” he said. Loughry
asked how much of a financial benefit to the county would
it take for commissioners to move forward with the idea. “Is it $5
million a year?” he said. “Is it $2 million?” Mike Smith said he would want
the amount to be at least $3 million or $4 million. “I’m not even sure about
that,” he said. Loughry said he will consult with officials with CoreCivic and have an answer in time for the commission’s
next regular weekly meeting on Wednesday. “We’ve got to have a number,” Mike
Smith said.
Apr 22, 2021 leavenworthtimes.com
CoreCivic asks county to take
over detention center
Officials
with CoreCivic are proposing that the county
government take over the operations of the company’s Leavenworth Detention
Center. The idea is being proposed as a way to keep
the local facility open following a presidential executive order that
prohibits the U.S Department of Justice from contracting with
privately-operated detention centers. Under the proposal, CoreCivic
would retain ownership of the Leavenworth Detention Center property, which
would be leased by the county. Damon Hininger, president and CEO of CoreCivic,
reviewed the proposal Wednesday with Leavenworth County commissioners. He
acknowledged there are still a lot of “what ifs” associated with the
proposal. Commissioners took no action on the proposal Wednesday. Commission
Chairman Mike Smith suggested commissioners will need to have a series of
work session meetings to talk about the issue. “This is something that is
probably going to take a lot more discussion,” he said. Hininger,
who was joined Wednesday by two other CoreCivic
representatives, said the 1,000-bed Leavenworth Detention Center houses
prisoners for the U.S. Marshals Service, which is an agency of the Department
of Justice. Hininger said an executive order issued
by President Joe Biden in late January prohibits the U.S. Department of
Justice from contracting directly with private companies for detention
services. But the Justice Department can enter into agreements with other
government entities. Hininger said CoreCivic envisions a new structure for the Leavenworth
Detention Center in which the U.S. Marshals Service would contract with the
county government. He said the 175 employees at the Leavenworth Detention
Center would transition from CoreCivic to the
county. “These would be county employees,” he said. Hininger
said CoreCivic would work with county officials to
ensure the operation of the facility would be cost neutral, resulting in no
additional cost for the county. He said the costs of operating the facility
would be fully reimbursed by the federal government. Hininger
said CoreCivic could have full-time employees at
the site for the maintenance of the facility. He suggested CoreCivic also could provide support services for the
county for things such as legal services, human resources
and finance. Hininger suggested the U.S. Marshals
Service may be interested in contracting with the county to continue to house
prisoners at the Leavenworth facility because of its location, which he said
is ideal. Commissioner Doug Smith asked about the timeframe for making a decision on the proposal. Hininger
said CoreCivic’s contract with the U.S. Marshals
Service for the Leavenworth Detention Center is set to expire at the end of
the year. But Hininger believes the Marshals
Service appreciates that time will be needed for an appropriate transition.
Mike Smith said he wants to make sure the county is protected. And he wants
to make sure the numbers add up. Commissioner Vicky Kaaz
said commissioners need to make sure there are safeguards in place for the
county. “We need to make sure that there are mechanisms in place to protect
the county,” she said. Hininger said he does not
want CoreCivic to do anything that would put the
county in peril. Hininger grew up in Lansing and
began his career with CoreCivic at the Leavenworth
Detention Center. “This is home to me,” he said. Kaaz
said county officials tried to contact the Kansas congressional delegation to
advocate for reconsideration of the decision made by the president. “But it
seems to be to no avail so far, but hopefully maybe there can be some
changes,” she said. Hininger said CoreCivic has been in contact with the office of U.S.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas. Hininger said the
senator has been engaged on the issue and is aware of the proposal being made
to the county. State Sen. Jeff Pittman, D-Leavenworth, attended Wednesday’s
County Commission meeting. Pittman expressed concern about the potential loss
of 175 jobs in the community. “I think we need to focus on those jobs and
figure out what we can do to keep them here,” he said. Commissioner Jeff
Culbertson also expressed concern about the possible loss of property taxes
paid by CoreCivic for the Leavenworth Detention
Center. Culbertson said he believes the company would still be required to
pay property taxes if the land is leased by the county. “I think this is
exactly where Leavenworth County would need to step up,” he said.
Commissioners later discussed having a work session to discuss the proposal
on April 29.Apr 24, 2021 PCWG watch Michigan:
Corizon wrongful death suit
Feb
10, 2021 leavenworthtimes.com
Police
investigate incidents at detention facility
Two
officers and an inmate suffered significant injuries during recent incidents
at a privately-operated detention facility in Leavenworth, a police spokesman
said. The first of the two incidents was reported at
about 6 p.m. Friday at the CoreCivic Leavenworth
Detention Center, 100 Highway Terrace. A male inmate reportedly was beaten by
a group of other inmates. The victim was taken to the hospital to be treated
for injuries that are considered life-threatening, according to Maj. Dan
Nicodemus, deputy chief of the Leavenworth Police Department. The incident is
being investigated by the Police Department. Nicodemus said investigators are
working to identify the inmates who were involved. The second incident was
reported at about 6 p.m. Saturday at the Leavenworth Detention Center. A male
inmate allegedly threw hot water on a female correctional officer and
battered and stabbed the officer. The inmate also allegedly kicked another
female officer in the chest. The two officers were taken to the hospital for
what Nicodemus said were severe injuries. Nicodemus said the matter will be
referred to the County Attorney’s Office for prosecution. Nicodemus does not
believe there is a connection between the two incidents. The U.S. Marshals
Service contracts with CoreCivic to house inmates
who are awaiting trial in the federal court system at the Leavenworth
Detention Center. President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order
which orders the attorney general not to renew U.S. Department of Justice
contracts with privately-operated criminal detention facilities. CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin
has said company officials are not yet fully aware of how the executive order
may impact each of CoreCivic’s facilities including
the Leavenworth Detention Center.
Aug
22, 2020 hppr.org
Federal
Prosecutors Defy Court Order In Cases Over
Attorney-Client Recordings In Leavenworth
The
U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas City, Kansas, says it will no longer
cooperate with cases brought by inmates whose phone calls with their
attorneys were recorded at the pretrial detention prison in Leavenworth,
Kansas. In a notice filed in federal court on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney
said that after consulting with the Justice Department, it “has determined
that it cannot and will not comply with the Court’s July 27, 2020 discovery
order, which the Department has concluded is both unreasonable and contrary
to law.” The court’s July 27 order denied a request from the U.S. Attorney’s
office asking to be relieved of its duty to provide further discovery in the
cases. The U.S. Attorney's notice is the latest twist in a years-long saga
over the audio- and video-recording of attorney-client phone calls and
meetings at the prison, which houses men and women charged with federal
crimes who are unable to make bail. The prison is run by CoreCivic
Inc., the second largest private prison operator in the United States. The
company was formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. Four years
ago, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson appointed a special master, or an
independent third party, to investigate and determine whether the U.S.
Attorney’s office unlawfully benefited from access to the recordings. In a
blistering opinion last August, Robinson concluded there was evidence the
U.S. Attorney’s office had a “systematic practice of purposeful collection,
retention and exploitation of calls” made between detainees and their
attorneys. She then held the office in contempt for disobeying her orders to
preserve documents and recordings as part of the investigation, which she
launched after the Federal Public Defender’s office in Kansas first brought
the recordings to light. The Justice Department has appealed her ruling to
the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case is pending. Since
Robinson’s ruling, more than 100 inmates have sought to have their
convictions vacated or their sentences reduced, claiming their Sixth
Amendment rights were violated. Robinson has ordered the U.S. Attorney’s
office to turn over emails, attachments and other
documents to the inmates. The office says it has already devoted hundreds of
staff and attorney hours to complying with the court’s orders and has turned
over voluminous amounts of data, including more than 20,000 documents. But by
flatly refusing to cooperate further, it now risks being held in contempt
again by Robinson, as it acknowledges in the notice it filed. “The Department
understands that this decision may result in the Court imposing a sanction
against the United States,” it wrote, adding that it believed that would be
unwarranted and the cases can proceed to resolution without further
discovery. The Federal Public Defender’s office in Kansas, which represents
the inmates and spearheaded the investigation into the recordings, declined
to comment on the filing. The 30-page document was signed by Stephen R. McAllister,
the U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas. Although the document says the
office’s decision was taken after “careful consideration and review by the
Department of Justice,” no attorneys from the Justice Department signed it.
Jim Cross, a spokesman for McAllister, said the filing "speaks for
itself." This latest twist in the recordings saga comes just weeks after
CoreCivic and the operator of the prison’s
telephone system, Securus Technologies Inc., agreed to pay $3.7 million to
resolve a class action lawsuit brought by attorneys whose conversations with
their clients were recorded at Leavenworth. That settlement, in turn, came a
year after the two companies agreed to pay $1.45 million to settle a separate
class action brought by inmates. Michael Hodgson, an attorney who represented
the attorneys in the first class action case, said
he had read the U.S. Attorney’s filing and had never seen anything like it in
17 years of practicing in the federal courts. “I read it and I thought,
‘Wow,’” he said. In its filing, the U.S. Attorney’s office said that Robinson
and the special master have investigated its conduct for four years, “much as
a financial auditor would minutely review a corporation’s every file and
document,” irrespective of the narrow issues it says the cases present. The
U.S. Attorney claims that “there is not a shred of evidence” in any of the
cases that have been brought by inmates “that any prosecutor intruded on the
attorney-client relationship of any of these petitioners in order to obtain a
conviction or an advantage at sentencing.”
Aug
5, 2020 abajournal.com
Afternoon
Briefs: Trump accused of violating disability law; CoreCivic
settles suit over
recorded attorney-client calls
CoreCivic agrees to settle
suit over recorded attorney-client calls. Private prison company CoreCivic and phone provider Securus Technologies Inc.
have agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle an attorney class action over
recorded attorney-client phone calls. The class
consists of about 750 lawyers whose conversations with clients were recorded
at the Leavenworth, Kansas, prison. (Law360)
Nov
17, 2019 valliantnews.com
Audit
knocks Leavenworth private prison for understaffing, security problems,
deception
An audit of the Leavenworth Detention Center
shows problems with understaffing, security and attempts to hide
“triple-bunking” practices from inspectors, according to a Department of
Justice report released Tuesday. The audit, onducted
by the Office of the Inspector General for the Justice Department, detailed
those problems and others, including a lack of oversight by federal
authorities and a lack of documentation that the contract for the privately
run federal prison was awarded competitively. The detention center holds
hundreds of prisoners for the U.S. Marshals Service and is operated by CoreCivic, Inc., one of the nation’s two largest private
prison companies, under a $697 million contract. The report comes amid a
legal battle over the prison’s improper recordings of phone calls and
meetings between prisoners and their attorneys, and as the Trump
administration reverses an Obama-era plan to phase out the federal
government’s use of private prisons. The problems noted in the Leavenworth
report are “significant” and may be more widespread, according to Robert Storch,
the deputy inspector general for the Justice Department. “Understaffing at
Leavenworth potentially placed the security of staff and detainees at risk,”
Storch said in a video statement released with the report. “We are concerned
that the lack of effective monitoring at Leavenworth may also be a problem at
other facilities that hold Marshals Service detainees.” According to the
report, staffing levels at the prison fell short in recent years, with 23
percent of its correctional officer posts empty at one point. The lack of
officers at times meant closing security posts that CoreCivic
had identified as “mandatory” for safety and security. Rather than take steps
to solve the understaffing, CoreCivic made
decisions that exacerbated the problem, according to the report, including
sending employees from Leavenworth to other CoreCivic
facilities. As staffing levels fell, CoreCivic
chose to bring in more inmates. The Marshals Service allowed CoreCivic to contract with a local government to house
nonfederal prisoners at Leavenworth — at a lower rate than what the Marshals
Service paid. Understaffing is a chronic problem in the private prison
industry, said Judith Greene, director of the nonprofit research group
Justice Strategies. Companies like CoreCivic —
previously called Corrections Corporation of America — have a motive to
maximize profits, and personnel is one of their biggest costs. “It’s embedded
in the business strategy,” Greene said. “It’s a somewhat perverse incentive
if what you’re looking for is a prison that is adequately staffed.” Without
the Marshals Service’s knowledge, Leavenworth officials hid from inspectors
the prison’s practice of “triple-bunking” inmates in cells meant for two
people, according to the report. In 2011, prison officials removed beds from
cells ahead of inspections by the American Correctional Association, and the
company’s own investigation suggested that had happened in other inspections.
“These and other issues went undetected — often for a long period of time —
because the Marshals Service failed to provide sufficient oversight of the
contractor,” said Storch, the deputy inspector general. The Marshals Service
employee tasked with monitoring CoreCivic’s
performance on a day-to-day basis was stationed off-site, visited the prison
infrequently and lacked adequate training for the job, the report said. The
contract for the Leavenworth prison provided the Marshals Service with tools
to hold CoreCivic accountable, including the
ability to withhold money. But from 2006 to January 2017, the Marshals
Service never did that at Leavenworth, or any of its other 14 contract
facilities. By contrast, the federal Bureau of Prisons, which holds similar
contracts at 13 facilities, imposed more than $23 million in penalties from
2011 to 2015 for similar shortcomings. In response to questions about the
audit, the Marshals Service provided a written statement: “The U.S. Marshals
Service has been working aggressively with the Office of Inspector General
for more than a year on the assessments included in the report,” the
statement read in part. “We have implemented, or are in the process of
implementing, all of the recommendations that pertain to us.” The audit also
took issue with an apparent lack of competition in the bidding of the
Leavenworth contract to CoreCivic. The bidding
process potentially limited the pool of possible contractors, but the federal
office awarding the contract could not show why. The Marshals Service
couldn’t show the government was getting the best value for its dollars, the
report said. Also noted in the report: CoreCivic
withheld, for months or years, regular payments that employees should have
been receiving through a fringe benefit. The Office of the Inspector General
said the Marshals Service should work with the Department of Labor to resolve
that issue. The Marshals Service also improperly paid more than $103,000 in
salaries and benefits for commissary positions that were not included in the
contract. Meanwhile, the prison remains at the center of an investigation
into how and why federal prosecutors obtained from the prison recordings of
phone calls between inmates and attorneys, and video of their meetings, that
are protected by attorney-client privilege. Federal public defenders have
protested the recordings, saying their clients’ rights have been violated. A
special master appointed by a federal judge to investigate the case reported
that 188 inmate phone calls to attorneys had been recorded and later
downloaded so that a law enforcement officer or government attorney could
listen to it, or in response to a subpoena. Those included 54 calls marked
“private” that should not have been available, according to the policies of
the prison and its telephone contractor, Securus Technologies. The special
master, David Cohen, a Cleveland lawyer, wrote that it was unclear why those
calls were recorded. He suggested further investigation of that question and
other topics, including the after-hours entry of a federal prosecutor into
the judge’s chambers. The special master reported he did not think law
enforcement authorities had viewed video recordings of inmates’ meetings with
attorneys that had been collected during an investigation into contraband at
the prison. Federal public defenders have pushed for a wider investigation
into the recordings and the prosecutors’ actions. A federal judge has yet to
rule on that request.
Sep
28, 2019 wyandottedaily.com
Public
defender says government owes it legal fees for misconduct in Leavenworth
tapings case
The
federal public defender’s office in Kansas says it’s entitled to nearly
$224,000 in legal fees because of prosecutor misconduct in an explosive case
over the taping of attorney-client phone calls at the Leavenworth pretrial
detention prison. In a court filing this week, the public defender says it
incurred nearly $1.7 million in fees and expenses litigating the case but is
seeking only the amount “required to litigate the Government’s contemptuous
conduct.” It cites two areas of misconduct by the government, both of which
had previously been identified by the court: its failure to preserve evidence
in the case; and its failure to cooperate with witness and document
production. “From the outset, the Government disregarded the Court’s Orders
to preserve evidence and to cooperate, and, consequently, this litigation has
dragged on for more than three years,” the public defender states in its
filing. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson last month held the U.S.
Attorney’s office in Kansas in contempt for its lack of cooperation in the
case. She issued her 188-page ruling in a contentious dispute over the extent
of federal prosecutors’ involvement in the recording of attorney-client phone
calls at the Leavenworth facility. The detention center is run by CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America),
one of the country’s largest private prison companies. The public defender
claimed CoreCivic made video and audio recordings
available to federal prosecutors. It said that violated inmates’ rights under
the Sixth Amendment. The U.S. Attorney’s office at first denied accessing the
recordings, then later said it had accessed only some. In all, more than
1,000 phone calls between attorneys in the public defender’s office and their
clients were recorded. Robinson found that the U.S. Attorney’s office had a
“systematic practice of purposeful collection, retention and exploitation of
calls” made between detainees and their attorneys. Scores of defendants
charged with or convicted of federal crimes could see their cases dropped or
prison sentences reduced based on their claims of prosecutorial misconduct
and violations of attorney-client privilege. A spokesman for the U.S.
Attorney’s office did not return calls seeking comment on the public
defender’s fee request. Melody Brannon, the head of the federal public
defender’s office in Kansas, declined to comment. Not long after he was
confirmed as the U.S. Attorney for Kansas in December 2017, Stephen
McAllister sought to tamp down the furor over the recordings by seeking to
reach an agreement with the federal public defender’s office. The agreement
called for affected defendants’ prison sentences to be reduced. But he was
overruled by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who said that the
Justice Department could not approve blanket reductions of defendants’
sentences “absent evidence of particularized harm.” The federal public
defender estimates it spent nearly 7,000 hours on the litigation over a
three-year period, but says it’s seeking only those fees it incurred in
connection with government’s misconduct. It bases its fee request on hourly
rates ranging from $325 an hour for Brannon and her top deputies to $250 an
hour for two assistant public defenders to $100 for the office’s
investigator. The $325 figure is well below what senior attorneys at Kansas
City’s top private law firms charge for their work. Even if Robinson awards
the requested fees, the money won’t be directed to the public defender’s
budget. Rather, the public defender is requesting that Robinson consult with
an arm of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to determine where the
funds should go. The disclosures that attorney-client calls and meetings at
Leavenworth were recorded spawned two separate class action lawsuits by
inmates at the prison and their attorneys. Last month, CoreCivic
and the operator of the phone system at the prison, Securus Technologies,
agreed to settle the case with the inmates for $1.45 million. The attorney
class action is pending.
Aug
28, 2019 thekansan.com
Stabbing reported at detention center
Authorities
are investigating a stabbing at a detention facility in Leavenworth, a police
official said. The incident was reported Friday at the CoreCivic
Leavenworth Detention Center, 100 Highway Terrace. Leavenworth Police Chief
Pat Kitchens said two male inmates allegedly battered another male inmate.
The victim’s injuries are not considered to be life-threatening. Kitchens
said the Leavenworth Police Department is assisting the Leavenworth Detention
Center with the investigation. The U.S. Marshals Service contracts with the
privately run Leavenworth Detention Center to house federal inmates who are
awaiting trial.
Aug 27, 2019 kansascity.com
Leavenworth
detainees reach $1.45M settlement over recorded attorney phone calls
The
operator and telephone provider of a private prison in Leavenworth have
agreed to settle a lawsuit with detainees who alleged phone calls with their
attorneys were illegally recorded. Leavenworth Detention Center’s operator, CoreCivic, and its phone provider, Securus Technologies,
agreed to pay $1.45 million into a fund that would be distributed among more
than 500 current and former detainees, according to court documents. As part
of the proposed agreement, which is subject to court approval, some of the detainees
could receive up to $10,000. About a third of the settlement fund would go to
the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Any unclaimed funds would be donated to Kansas
Legal Services, records show. In the lawsuit filed in 2017, former detainees
Ashley Huff and Gregory Rapp claimed their confidential communications with
their attorneys were intercepted and used by the defendants without their
consent. The lawsuit sought $5 million or more in damages for alleged
violations of wiretap laws. If the agreement is approved, CoreCivic
would pay $1.1 million and Securus would fund $350,000, according to court
records. Bob Horn, a Kansas City attorney who represented the plaintiffs,
told KCUR, which first reported on the agreement, that the settlement was
“significant” for the detainees. CoreCivic and
Securus denied the allegations of wrongdoing alleged in the lawsuit. In an
email, CoreCivic spokeswoman Amanda Gilchrist said
the settlement “should not be interpreted as an admission of wrongdoing or
liability.” The settlement agreement came about a week after a federal judge
held the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas in contempt of court for its
pattern of misrepresentations and lack of cooperation during an investigation
into the scandal. Conversations between clients and their attorneys are
confidential in nearly all aspects. But in her order, U.S. District Court of
Kansas Judge Julie Robinson said federal prosecutors in Kansas determined on
their own that they could access recordings of these discussions, tainting
several criminal cases along the way. At least three criminal defendants in
Kansas have had their sentences vacated or their indictments dismissed as a
result of the scandal. More than 100 others have filed petitions for similar
relief. The scandal came to light in 2016 during the prosecution of inmates
suspected of trafficking drugs within the prison’s walls. The prison is
operated under contract for the U.S. Marshals Service by CoreCivic
Inc. — formerly known as Corrections Corp. of America. Many of the people
held there are defendants awaiting trial and have not yet been convicted.
Aug
15, 2019 kansaspublicradio.org
Prosecutors
Held in Contempt over Leavenworth Tapings, Judge Will Hear Prisoners' Appeals
Wednesday
A
federal judge is holding the U.S. Attorney's Office in Kansas in contempt in
connection with a burgeoning scandal involving recordings of confidential
conversations between criminal defendants and their attorneys at a federal
detention center in Leavenworth, Kansas. More than 100 people charged with or
convicted of federal crimes could have their cases dropped or prison
sentences reduced based on their claims of prosecutorial misconduct and
violations of the attorney-client privilege. In a 188-page ruling issued
Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson wrote that the U.S. Attorney's
Office disobeyed her previous orders to preserve documents and recordings as
part of an investigation into the recordings. "The elements necessary
for a finding of contempt are clearly met," Robinson concluded. "The
(U.S. Attorney's Office) had knowledge of the... orders yet disobeyed
them." The detention center is run by CoreCivic
(formerly Corrections Corporation of America), one of the country's largest
private prison companies. Defense attorneys and the Federal Public Defender's
Office have alleged CoreCivic made video and audio
recordings — which they say should have been protected by the Sixth Amendment
— available to federal prosecutors. The federal government has tried to pin
the blame on two “rogue” prosecutors, Robinson wrote. But she says there’s
evidence the U.S. Attorney’s Office had a “systematic practice of purposeful
collection, retention and exploitation of calls” made between detainees and
their attorneys. The U.S. Attorney's Office at first denied it had accessed
any of the recordings. Later it said prosecutors had only accessed some. And
throughout the proceedings, the office has denied it ever violated the Sixth
Amendment. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately
wish to comment on the ruling. As punishment for the contempt finding, the
U.S. Department of Justice will be forced to pay costs incurred by the office
of Federal Public Defender Melody Brannon while litigating the case over the
past three years. Those costs have yet to be determined. Brannon declined to
comment for this story. Robinson, herself a former prosecutor in the troubled
U.S. Attorney's Office, also agreed to hear petitions for a writ of habeas
corpus filed by the 110 — and counting — prisoners who claim their Sixth Amendment
rights were violated. Robinson’s ruling was issued in a criminal case that
stems from a 2016 indictment as part of an investigation into alleged drug
and contraband trafficking at the Leavenworth Detention Center. Six people
were initially indicted, but prosecutors have said they suspect more than 150
people inside and outside the facility were involved. As part of their
investigation, prosecutors issued a grand jury subpoena to obtain voluminous
recordings from more than 100 video cameras inside the facility. They also
obtained more than 48,000 phone calls made by prisoners. While a more
targeted request may have been legitimate, the judge said, prosecutors knew
that they would be given recordings from cameras in five out of the
facility’s nine rooms designated for attorney-client meetings. And while the
U.S. Attorney’s Office has said it only received attorney-client phone calls
because they were “commingled” with other calls, the judge again said
prosecutors should have known some of the calls would involve attorneys, and
the government did not take steps to protect them. Robinson estimated more
than 700 attorney-client visits were recorded inside the facility. The videos
do not include audio of the meetings, but Robinson wrote that the recordings can
still be valuable to prosecutors. For example, in one specific case, Robinson
wrote that prosecutors “valued knowing whether there was a document exchange
between” between a client and his attorney. Other information, such as
knowing whether a defendant is angry, talking to their attorney through an
interpreter, or talking to their attorney at all, could be valuable clues for
prosecutors engaged in plea negotiations or pre-trial strategy, the judge
noted. The government has also claimed the inmates should have known their
calls were being recorded, but Robinson rejected that claim. The phones,
operated by a third party for CoreCivic, included a
warning at the start of every phone call that calls may be recorded or
monitored. The company had a “privatization” process whereby attorneys could
file paperwork to have phone calls made to them excluded from recordings. But
CoreCivic “misled” detainees about the process, the
judge said, and the company sometimes recorded attorney-client phone calls
even after attorneys had completed the process to privatize their phone
calls. “Detainees and defense attorneys were provided with incorrect,
misleading, and inconsistent information about how to accomplish a
confidential phone call at (the facility),” Robinson wrote. “Scores of
defense counsel who testified or submitted affidavits in this case stated
that they were unaware that their conversations… were being recorded.” In
total, more than 1,000 phone calls between public defenders and their clients
were recorded. The Federal Public Defender’s Office had asked that more than
100 defendants whose attorney-client communications were breached be
dismissed. Alternatively, the office asked for a 50% reduction in sentences
for all affected clients. Robinson, however, wrote that she “reluctantly
agrees” with the government’s claim that she shouldn’t make a blanket ruling
on Sixth Amendment violations that covers every case. Instead, the judge
plans to “triage” the cases. She will consolidate them for the purposes of
discovery, so the Federal Public Defender’s Office can seek more documents
and records from prosecutors. Then Robinson will issue rulings on a
case-by-case basis. At least one person has already been released from prison
in connection with recordings at the Leavenworth facility. Michelle Reulet, of Montgomery, Texas, was freed last year after
being sentenced in 2017 to five years in prison for mail fraud. Former Kansas
Solicitor General Stephen McAllister, who was appointed to head the office in
January 2018, previously indicated he was willing to work out an agreement to
reduce the sentences of inmates whose communications with their attorneys
were recorded. Two months later, however, McAllister’s boss at the Justice
Department, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, nixed the proposal,
saying that blanket reductions of inmates’ sentences were out of the
question.
Nov 9, 2018 kansascity.com
Inmate in Kansas jail says prisoners weren’t allowed to vote, and now
she’s suing
A privately-run jail in Leavenworth is accused in a lawsuit of
systematically denying prisoners their constitutional right to vote. The suit
was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Kansas by a woman who was being
detained at the federal Leavenworth Detention Center during the November 2016
general election. While convicted felons lose the right to vote, Brenda Wood
did not fall in that category. She was awaiting trial and was otherwise an
eligible voter, according to her suit, which also seeks class action status
to include others in the same situation. Of the hundreds of prisoners held
there at any one time, the majority are not convicted felons, according to
the suit. Wood had been detained at the facility, operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as the Corrections Corporation
of America, since late November 2014, and had just voted in the general
election that month. CoreCivic is contracted by the
U.S. Marshals Service to run the jail, and most of its inmates are defendants
facing trial on federal criminal charges. According to the suit, the inmate
handbook provided to all new detainees did not provide any information about
how to vote. “Indeed, the only reference to ‘voting’ provided to detainees at
CCA-Leavenworth is an instruction in the inmate handbook on how to vote for
television programs to watch on facility TVs,” the lawsuit alleges. When Wood
contacted staff and asked for help in obtaining an advance ballot to vote,
she alleges, she was told, “We don’t do that here.” She said that several
other follow-up requests she made were also denied. And her experience was
not unique, according to the suit. “Detainees at CCA-Leavenworth would
routinely ask for access to vote or for help obtaining an advance ballot, and
such requests were routinely denied,” the suit alleges. “Indeed, defendants’ voter
suppression was a common grievance discussed in the population of detainees.”
According to the suit, the Leavenworth County Election Office has never
received a request from the facility for an absentee ballot. The suit
maintains that there are potentially hundreds of other detainees that the
suit could apply to, who at the time were: U.S. citizens; Kansas residents;
18 or older; not serving sentences for felony convictions; registered voters
or people who had been denied the chance to register; and had not voted
previously in the 2016 election. Jail inmates around the country have filed
similar lawsuits, and Wood’s suit cites previous U.S. Supreme Court cases
that upheld the rights of eligible voters in jail at the time of an election.
“In decision after decision, this court has made clear that a citizen has a
constitutionally protected right to participate in elections on an equal
basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction,” according to a 1972 Supreme
Court opinion. Wood’s lawsuit seeks monetary damages as a result of the
alleged constitutional violations. A lawsuit similar to Wood’s, also seeking
monetary compensation, was filed in 2017 by inmates at a county jail in
Indiana at the time of the 2016 election. The federal judge presiding over
that case ruled in May that the suit could go forward as a class action
representing several hundred inmates at the jail at the time of the 2016
election.
Oct 24, 2018 kansascity.com
Woman freed from prison on revelations in Leavenworth prison phone call investigation
A federal judge in Kansas City, Kan., has ordered a woman’s early release
from prison after learning that a former prosecutor listened to phone calls
between the woman and her lawyer. Because of that possible violation of her
constitutional rights, Michelle Reulet was released
Monday from the federal prison where she was serving a 5-year sentence. She
was not scheduled to be released until September 2020. The revelation of the
former prosecutor’s actions came earlier this month during a court hearing
concerning the recording and dissemination of attorney-client phone calls at
the privately-run Leavenworth Detention Center. Testimony that the former
prosecutor who handled Reulet’s case had listened
to the calls prompted her attorneys and the U.S. attorney’s office to jointly
ask that she be re-sentenced to time served and released. “The facts revealed
during the hearings were not previously known to the leadership of the U.S.
Attorney’s Office,” U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister said in a written statement
released Monday. “In light of those facts, and given the relatively short
time remaining on Ms. Reulet’s sentence, we
believed the best choice to serve the ends of justice was not to oppose the
public defender’s motion to amend Ms. Reulet’s
sentence to time served.” Reulet, 37, a Texas
resident, was prosecuted in Kansas on drug, money laundering and mail fraud
charges. She pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced in May 2017 to
the five-year prison term. The recorded conversations with her attorney
occurred while she was held at the Leavenworth facility run by CoreCivic, formerly called the Corrections Corporation of
America. She is one of potentially dozens of defendants whose cases could be
affected by the court case now pending before a federal judge in Kansas City,
Kan. Defense attorneys allege that prosecutors engaged in a widespread
practice of obtaining recordings of attorney-client phone calls in violation
of their clients’ constitutional rights. Federal prosecutors dispute that
contention, with the exception of what they call a few isolated instances
such as what happened in Reulet’s case. Litigation
over the recordings has been going on for years. In 2017, a federal
prosecutor left the U.S. attorney’s office after admitting that she also had
listened to recordings of attorney-client phone calls. U.S. District Judge
Julie Robinson heard nearly two weeks of testimony this month and has
scheduled an additional hearing in November.
Sep 13, 2018
huffingtonpost.com
Muslim Inmate Claims Kansas Prison Officers Harassed Her Over Headscarf
A Muslim inmate said she has been tormented for months by guards at a
Kansas prison over her decision to wear a religious headscarf, a Muslim civil
rights group stated Wednesday. Valeriece Ealom, a 49-year-old Muslim woman, said correctional
officers at the Leavenworth Detention Center (LDC) called her headscarf a
“rag” and ordered her to remove it if she wanted to leave her cell. When she
filed complaints with prison management about her treatment, officials failed
to take any significant corrective action, according to the national legal
advocacy group Muslim Advocates. “The actions that have taken place in the
Leavenworth Detention Center are in clear violation of federal law,” Nimra Azmi, a staff attorney for Muslim Advocates, said
in a statement. The LDC is a U.S. Marshals Service facility that is run by CoreCivic, one of America’s largest private prison
operators. Muslim Advocates has sent a letter about Ealom’s
alleged mistreatment to the Department of Justice, the U.S. Marshals Service
and CoreCivic officials. The LDC, a maximum
security facility, has come under increased scrutiny after a Justice
Department audit last year found evidence of understaffing, security problems
and deceptive practices there. The LDC has also been accused of recording
phone calls between prisoners and their lawyers. Ealom
has been at the LDC since November 2017, when prosecutors revoked her parole
in a drug case, The Kansas City Star reported. She informed the facility of
her desire to wear a headscarf, and an LDC chaplain provided her with two
headscarves to wear. After she started covering her hair, she claimed, three
corrections officers started to harass her ― insisting that she remove
the “rag” or face discipline. According to Muslim Advocates, the harassment
escalated after Ealom notified prison management
about the officers’ actions. One day in January, two officers reportedly
refused to let her leave her cell to receive her daily medications while
wearing her headscarf. One officer threatened to put her in solitary
confinement and said that “any grievance she filed would be shredded,” the
Muslim Advocates letter stated. In subsequent incidents, the group claimed, a
third officer confiscated Ealom’s headscarf on the
pretext that it was “contraband” and “belligerently” interrupted her during
prayers. She also claimed that at one point she was locked in her cell and
told that “because [she is] Muslim, [she] had to stay in her cell and pray.”
Muslim Advocates said Ealom repeatedly informed LDC
management about the officers’ actions. In February she tried to file a
federal civil lawsuit about the matter, without a lawyer. The judge, finding
that she didn’t provide enough information, dismissed her suit in June, The
Kansas City Star reported. The LDC’s management has refused to properly
address the situation, Muslim Advocates claimed. The group alleged that CoreCivic’s employees have violated federal law by
infringing on Ealom’s right to practice her faith.
The group also faulted the U.S. Marshals Service for failing to ensure that CoreCivic is meeting federal detention standards.
“Despite being aware of the officers’ bigoted and discriminatory conduct,
LDC’s management has not taken any meaningful steps to address the
situation,” Muslim Advocates wrote in its letter. “In fact, by refusing to
take any corrective action, LDC’s management has only blessed further
wrongdoing.” CoreCivic responded to the letter by
stating, “We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, and cultural and ethnic
sensitivity education is part of every employee’s training.” “CoreCivic cares deeply about every person in our care,
and we work hard to ensure those in our facility are treated respectfully and
humanely,” Amanda Gilchrist, the company’s public affairs director, told
HuffPost in an email. She declined to comment about any of the specific
assertions Ealom made about the officers’ conduct
or to say whether the employees involved were disciplined in any way.
Gilchrist said the facility has a “robust grievance process” for inmates to
raise concerns. “Ms. Ealom has availed herself of
those mechanisms on several occasions, and the facility has responded and
continues to respond appropriately,” Gilchrist wrote. “Both the facility
Chaplain and Warden have provided assistance to Ms. Ealom
with regard to her religious head gear, and will continue to address any
concerns she raises promptly.” A representative for the U.S. Marshals Service
did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. A spokesman for the agency
told The Associated Press that it is looking into the allegations. Muslim
Advocates is insisting that the LDC take steps to train, supervise and
discipline the corrections officers involved in Ealom’s
alleged mistreatment. “We ask that CoreCivic and
USMS take immediate measures to address the pattern of religious
discrimination at LDC and ensure that Ms. Ealom and
other Muslim women housed in CoreCivic and U.S.
Marshal facilities around the country can practice their faith without fear
of harassment or retaliation,” the group stated.
Jul 27, 2018 kansascity.com
Lawsuit: Former Leavenworth
prison guard filed complaints, threatened with dead rat
A former corrections officer
at a privately run prison in Leavenworth has filed suit saying that he was
the victim of threats and intimidation after being labeled a snitch and a rat
by his co-workers. The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, alleges that
Michael G. Baldwin was also retaliated against by officials at the CoreCivic facility after reporting wage and compensation
concerns to the Department of Labor. Baldwin went on leave and was ultimately
discharged from his job. CoreCivic, formerly known
as Corrections Corporation of America, contracts with the U.S. Marshals
Service to house pretrial federal detainees. Baldwin started working as a
corrections officer in 2009. In 2013, he filed an internal grievance about
wage and benefits issues. As a result, the suit contends he was moved to a
less desirable position. In 2014, he took those wage concerns to the Department
of Labor. He was subsequently denied promotion. In 2015, the Department of
Labor fined CoreCivic “several hundred thousand
dollars” after investigating Baldwin’s complaint. The same day the ruling
came down, the warden “berated” Baldwin in front of other employees and told
them the facility might close if there were more complaints, the suit
alleges. His co-workers began calling Baldwin a rat, and new employees were
told not to trust him, according to the suit. In 2016, he reported that
another employee was stealing equipment. And when other employees learned
what he had done, the threats increased. Baldwin was allegedly warned not to
go to a company holiday party because “snitches end up in ditches.” At one
point, a dead rat was left on the roof of his vehicle, and he learned that
his co-workers had offered $100 to any prisoner who “shanked” Baldwin, the
suit maintains. Baldwin feared for his life and went on leave for anxiety,
according to the lawsuit. A few months later, in March 2017, he was “constructively
discharged” from his job. The suit seeks an unspecified amount in damages. CoreCivic is also facing several other cases. The company
is the focus of ongoing legal action over the taping of phone calls between
prisoners and their lawyers and allegations that they were shared with
prosecutors. That case arose out of another case involving contraband being
smuggled into the facility that resulted in criminal charges being filed
against several people. Baldwin’s suit is the second filed this week against CoreCivic by a former employee. Leslie West, a unit
manager, alleges in her federal lawsuit that her complaints about
understaffing that risked the safety of employees and inmates led to her
being fired. She was also forced to take a polygraph test during the
contraband smuggling investigation, which, the suit contends, was a violation
of federal labor law. Officials with CoreCivic said
Thursday they do not comment on pending litigation.
Jun
11, 2018 kansascity.com
Why were private attorney-client calls recorded? Now, Kansas inmates could
go free
One of the nation’s largest private prison operators has some serious
explaining to do. What was it doing recording private conversation between
attorneys and their incarcerated clients at the Leavenworth Detention Center?
After all, attorney-client privilege is supposed to be one of the bedrock
principles of America’s legal system. Clients should be able to talk to their
lawyers — confidentially — about their cases. That way, the attorney can
provide the best possible legal representation. And here’s a question for the
U.S. attorney’s office of Kansas: Why did some of its attorneys listen to
those supposedly private conversations? Certainly the lawyers knew that such
conversations were off-limits and that they had no business eavesdropping on
them. But how often did it happen? Those questions are among many that need
answering following what amounts to a shocking breach of constitutional
norms. Between 2011 and 2013, the detention center’s operator, CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of
America, recorded at least 1,338 phone calls — and possibly thousands more —
that detainees placed to their public defender attorneys, according to KCUR.
And we know now that prosecutors listened to some of those recordings. What’s
at stake? A whole lot. Lawsuits have been filed. The possibility now exists
that dozens of criminal cases impacted by the breach of confidentiality could
be tossed out. Inmates at some of CoreCivic’s 129
other facilities around the country may wonder if prison officials have taped
their conversations. After all, Barry Pollack, president of the National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, has told The Star that the recording
of attorney-client conversations is a widespread problem at private prisons,
which are not bound by Federal Bureau of Prisons prohibitions against it.
Then there’s the lingering damage that this case leaves behind. How can
defense attorneys gain the trust of their often destitute clients at a
facility like the one in Leavenworth when those clients suspect that their
conversations are being recorded? If all this raises questions about the
efficacy of private prisons, it should. But that’s an issue for another day.
This entire episode stems from a contraband investigation at the Leavenworth
facility. What’s especially disconcerting is that even after numerous news
stories about this issue and the appointment of a special master in October
2016 to look into this matter, a resolution has proven elusive. At one point,
the U.S. attorney’s office sent a letter to special master David Cohen
refusing any further cooperation with his investigation. Then last month, an
assistant U.S. attorney declined when asked 85 times to say whether federal
prosecutors improperly listened in on attorney-client phone calls. In May,
the new U.S. attorney for Kansas, Stephen McAllister, indicated his office is
prepared to work out an agreement with the public defender’s office. That’s
good news. Ironically, his announcement came midway through a hearing in
which the the public defender’s office asked the
judge to find McAllister’s office in contempt after it ceased cooperating
with the special master. CoreCivic declined
comment. So did McAllister’s office. But this situation desperately needs resolution,
and tensions between the federal public defender’s office and the U.S.
attorney must be tempered. CoreCivic, which court
records show has cooperated with this investigation, needs to ensure everyone
that its operations safeguard those critical conversations between attorneys
and their clients. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution demands no
less.
Jun 28, 2017 kansascity.com
Federal prosecutor leaves after revealing she listened to Leavenworth
prison phone calls
A federal prosecutor at the center of an investigation at Leavenworth
Detention Center has left the U.S. attorney’s office, days after she revealed
that she had listened to attorney-client phone calls at the prison, contrary
to her previous statements in court. Erin Tomasic
had been a special assistant prosecutor in Kansas City, Kan., and came under
increasing scrutiny in recent months as a federal judge ordered an
investigation into whether law enforcement officials used prison recordings
of inmates talking with their attorneys — conversations that are protected by
law. Federal prosecutors notified a judge on May 16 that Tomasic
no longer works for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas.
That came six days after Tomasic told her
supervisor she had listened to the recorded phone conversations of two
Leavenworth Detention Center inmates and their attorneys, according to court
documents filed June 19 by the U.S. attorney’s office. Those court filings,
signed by U.S. Attorney Tom Beall and two assistant U.S. attorneys, say they
are meant to correct statements by Tomasic that
“may be deemed misleading.” The prosecutors describe in the documents how Tomasic told a federal judge in September — and for
months allowed fellow prosecutors to believe — that law enforcement had not listened
to recorded inmate-attorney phone calls obtained by prosecutors investigating
contraband at the prison. In fact, as Tomasic later
revealed, she had listened to some of the recordings two months earlier. “Tomasic expressed remorse for having listened to the
defendant’s calls,” the federal prosecutors wrote. “And for not revealing
this action sooner.” Days after Tomasic left her
job, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ordered a wider investigation into
the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas City, Kan., citing an ongoing problem
with prosecutors’ “inconsistent, inaccurate or misleading statements.”
Robinson found that government officials had destroyed “critical evidence” at
an earlier stage of the investigation. Last year, Robinson had complained
that Tomasic entered the judge’s chambers after
hours, without authority, after having delivered evidence in the
investigation to Robinson’s office earlier in the day. A spokesman for the
U.S. attorney’s office confirmed that Tomasic no
longer worked for the office but declined to answer questions. Tomasic could not be reached for comment. The prison
recordings probe stemmed from an earlier criminal investigation of contraband
in the privately-run prison, which is operated under contract for the U.S.
Marshals Service by CoreCivic Inc. — formerly known
as Corrections Corp. of America. Many of the people held at the prison are
defendants awaiting trial and have not yet been convicted. Prosecutors
pursuing the contraband case collected hundreds of recordings of inmates
speaking with their attorneys, both on video and on the phone. Defense
attorneys protested that those conversations are protected by the Sixth
Amendment and attorney-client privilege, and that the prison had offered
repeated assurances that they would be private. Two Kansas City-area
attorneys, Adam Crane and David Johnson, have sued CoreCivic
and the prison’s telephone provider, Securus Technologies, accusing the firms
of violating state wiretap laws by recording their conversations with
clients. Barry Pollack, president of the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers, said the recording of attorney-client conversations is a
widespread problem at private prisons, which are not bound by Federal Bureau
of Prisons prohibitions against it. Examples of a federal prosecutor actually
listening to or using the recordings, he said, are more
rare. “That is, to me, far more troubling,” Pollack said. “It goes to
the very reason those conversations are protected.” A court-appointed special
master investigating the recordings reported that 188 attorney-client phone
calls had been obtained from the prison by law enforcement, including 54
marked “private” that should not have been available. For months, Tomasic and other prosecutors maintained that they took
measures to avoid listening to those calls. But in the court documents filed
last week, federal prosecutors say Tomasic in July
listened to multiple recordings of phone calls between Juan Herrera-Zamora, a
man held at Leavenworth while facing drug charges, and his attorney. Two
months later, she listened to a recording of another inmate, Ashley Huff,
speaking with her attorney. When Herrera-Zamora’s attorney asked prosecutors
if they had listened to his calls, the prosecutors said they had not. Beall
and the other prosecutors wrote that they believed it was true, and Tomasic did not correct them. Herrera-Zamora’s attorneys
filed motions challenging his conviction, alleging that prosecutors had used
the recordings against him. For Tomasic to listen
to the calls would run contrary to the U.S. attorney’s office’s stated
practice of having officials unrelated to the case screen the calls to “avoid
any appearance of impropriety.” When a judge in September asked Tomasic if inmates had been notified of the recordings,
she did not mention listening to the calls of Herrera-Zamora or Huff. Tomasic said attorney-client calls had only been accessed
in a few accidental instances, and that agents had stopped listening within
10 or 15 seconds. Then, on May 10, Tomasic informed
a supervisor that she had listened to the two inmates’ calls. In a May 16
court hearing, the supervisor replaced Tomasic in
court and told the judge that Tomasic no longer
worked for the U.S. attorney’s office. Federal Public Defender Melody Brannon
has pushed for the court to investigate further Tomasic’s
after-hours entry into the judge’s chambers. In a motion seeking more
investigation, Brannon wrote that a May 23 letter Tomasic
sent to the court “raises serious factual disputes” with earlier accounts of
the incident and carries implications for “the veracity of key players in
this litigation.” That request is still pending with the court, and the
investigation by the special master continues.
Apr 26, 2017
washingtonexaminer.com
DOJ inspector general: Privately run federal prison poses safety risks for
inmates, prisoners
A new report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General says a
privately-run federal prison in Kansas put the safety of its inmates in
jeopardy because of understaffing, overcrowding and poor training. The facility in question — The Leavenworth
Detention Center — is a 1,200 bed maximum-security facility is run by CoreCivic, under a contract reached with the U.S.
Marshals Service. "[I]n our judgment, the [U.S. Marshal Service's] lack of
effective continuous monitoring at the [Leavenworth prison] presents risks
that may extend throughout all its other contract detention facilities,"
the audit said. The audit made 24 recommendations for the facility after the
review, which took place between 2010 and 2015. One of the biggest issues was
the lack of correctional officer vacancies. At times, 23 percent of guard
positions remained vacant. "These correctional officer vacancies led to
several problems in 2015, including the LDC's long-term use of mandatory
overtime, which LDC personnel said led to lower morale, security concerns,
and fewer correctional officers available to escort medical staff and
detainees to and from the health services unit," the audit said. Another
discovery was the U.S. Marshal's decision to not punish CoreCivic
for failing to uphold terms of the deal on run the facility. In 2007, the
U.S. Marshals agreed to a 5-year contract with CoreCivic
that included three 5-year option periods at a cost of $697 million.
According to the audit, the federal government failed to explain why it
entered into a sole-source contract with CoreCivic,
and how it reached those numbers. CoreCivic
responded to the recommendations by saying it agreed with all of them. But it
also said it has made safety a priority. "CoreCivic
provides a diverse range of government solutions and has worked in close
partnership with the [Marhsals at Leavenworth] for
over 26 years, supporting the [Marshals'] needs to securely and safely house
individuals criminally charged with violating federal laws," reads a
portion of the CoreCivic response. "In doing
so, the safety and security of our facility, staff and those entrusted to our
care has consistently been our top priority." In February, CoreCivic announced its 2016 revenue was $1.85 billion, a
growth of $6 million from 2015. CoreCivic, which is
the fifth largest corrections company in the nation and one of the major
private prison companies, has been boosted by the election of President
Trump. Former President Barack Obama announced his Justice Department would
phase out its contracts with private prisons, a move that was reversed in
February by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Feb 15, 2017 cjonline.com
Federal prison in Kansas recorded hundreds of attorney-inmate meetings,
court investigator finds
A privately run federal prison in Kansas recorded video of hundreds of
meetings between inmates and their attorneys, a court-led investigation has
found after defense lawyers first raised concerns months ago about possible
violations of client privilege. The detention center in Leavenworth, operated
by Corrections Corporation of America, possessed video recordings of all
attorney-inmate meetings reviewed by the court investigator, who examined 30
randomly chosen visits that took place in spring 2016 and concluded hundreds
were recorded. The extent of the recordings hasn’t been previously disclosed.
Leavenworth CCA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas have been at the
heart of a monthslong drama in the region’s legal community over recordings
of attorney-inmate meetings at the prison, as well as recordings of
attorney-inmate phone calls. The ability of lawyers to meet with clients
privately is a bedrock principle of the American legal system, and this fall,
a federal judge named a special master to investigate. Defense attorneys
first raised concerns last summer over video recording of meetings with their
clients. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is prosecuting a handful of inmates,
accusing them of engaging in an elaborate smuggling ring within the prison.
The inmates’ attorneys put forward evidence that meetings had been recorded
and have since provided evidence that inmate phone calls with attorneys also
were recorded, even when attorneys had requested their numbers be blocked from
recordings. The special master, David Cohen, told Judge Julie Robinson last
month that while reviewing all of the video from all rooms where attorney
meetings took place would prove prohibitive, he reviewed a smaller sample of
meetings to determine that every meeting that took place in a room with a
camera was recorded. The attorney visitor logs for the 12-week period last
year where recordings occurred showed more than 700 attorney visits to rooms
equipped with cameras, Cohen wrote in a filing. “It appears all of these
attorney-inmate meetings were recorded,” Cohen said. “Of course, this
analysis does not address whether any person ever viewed these recordings.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office obtained the video and, while acknowledging
missteps, has denied suggestions of impropriety. The U.S. Attorney’s Office
has said “no employee of the United States Attorney’s Office or law
enforcement officer” has viewed any recording provided by CCA. “I made a very
serious mistake … but I want the court to know I did not intend to gain that
footage,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Tomasic said
in September. Parallel to the video recordings, Cohen also has been
investigating the extent of attorney-inmate phone recordings at the
Leavenworth facility. In December, Cohen reported he had analyzed 48,333
telephone audio files from the facility and that a little more than 200 of
those calls were made to a known attorney number. In a follow-up report,
Cohen said the more than 48,000 recorded phone calls came from about 1,400
numbers involving 58 inmates. CCA uses the prison technology company Securus
to operate its phone system. Securus has said Leavenworth CCA was responsible
for designating attorney numbers as private, nonrecorded numbers. The company
acknowledged allegations have been made in other places in the past regarding
recording but said it rechecks its system each time and has always found it
works properly. Melody Brannon, the federal public defender for Kansas, said
Cohen’s findings exposed unanswered questions. She urges Robinson to expand
the special master’s authority. “Specifically, the defense asks the special
master to determine the policy and practice of the Kansas (U.S. Attorney’s
Office) in obtaining, reviewing and disseminating attorney-client
communications, regardless of whether the USAO classified the communication
as privileged or not,” Brannon said in a January court filing. She added the
special master should also identify cases where the material was used and
“mark the possible constitutional, statutory and ethical implications.” The
U.S. Attorney’s Office is fighting the public defender’s request for
additional power for the special master. Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra
Barnett argues Brannon hasn’t offered any evidence warranting an expanded
investigation. Barnett has said prosecutors didn’t anticipate receiving
recorded attorney-client calls from the facility during their investigations.
Prosecutors had “no intent or desire” to obtain attorney-client calls, she
has said, adding they weren’t used by prosecutors. “When discoveries of these
calls occurred, appropriate steps were taken by the United States,” Barnett
said in a January filing. “Despite everything that has occurred in this case,
the United States has not sought to hide the discovery of these calls, and
would not do so.” Prosecutors also argue the phone recordings aren’t
privileged because the facility warned inmates their calls may be recorded.
By continuing their calls and not taking steps to have calls with attorneys
exempt from surveillance, the inmates waived their right to keep the
conversations from being monitored, they argue. Depending on how far Robinson
allows Cohen to go, the outcome of his investigation holds potentially
significant consequences in ongoing cases. Only a handful of people have been
charged in the Leavenworth smuggling investigation, but prosecutors indicate
they believe upwards of 90 inmates may be involved, as well as a number of
workers. The current controversy is also drawing attention to Securus, which
has faced scrutiny in other places over attorney-client recordings. A Kansas
and Missouri attorney filed a federal lawsuit against CCA and Securus in
January. They argue Securus and CCA record confidential attorney-client
communications, despite no legitimate reason to record. Attorneys have sued
Securus before. The company settled a 2014 lawsuit in Texas, agreeing to
provide additional safeguards. The settlement required implementation of a
system to allow attorneys to register their phone numbers on a “do not
record” list for calls with clients.
Jan 6, 2017 kmuw.org
Controversy Over Attorney-Client Recordings At Leavenworth Continues
The Kansas Federal Public Defender says federal prosecutors have failed to
turn over all attorney-client phone calls that were recorded at the pretrial
detention center in Leavenworth to a special master looking into their
legality. In a court filing Wednesday, the public defender identified
recorded calls to at least two attorneys that were not disclosed by
prosecutors. “The Special Master should be given authority to determine why
these telephone calls were not included in the material provided by the
government, and whether there are still recorded calls in the USAO (U.S.
Attorney’s office) possession or knowledge that should have been disclosed,”
the filing states. In October, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson appointed
David Cohen, a Cleveland attorney, as special master to investigate whether,
and to what extent, the pretrial detention facility had turned over
privileged video and audio recordings of attorney-client meetings to the U.S.
Attorney’s office in Kansas. The issue arose as part of a wide-ranging
criminal case in which inmates and corrections officers at the facility have
been charged with distributing drugs and other contraband within its walls.
Initially, six defendants, including two inmates, were charged. In its filing
Wednesday, the public defender says the government has since identified 95
additional detainees who may be subject to indictment. The underlying
criminal case, however, has largely been overshadowed by the revelations last
summer that the private operator of the facility, Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA), had been recording attorney-client phone calls and meetings
and, in some cases, turning the recordings over to prosecutors in the U.S.
Attorney’s office in Kansas City, Kansas. In a report last month, Cohen
identified 229 recorded calls made to known attorney phone numbers. The
public defender now says that some recorded calls were not identified by Cohen
because prosecutors had failed to turn them over to him. A spokesman for the
U.S. Attorney’s office did not return a call seeking comment. Lawyers with
the Federal Public Defender could not be reached for comment. Cohen, reached
at his Cleveland office, said he did not know why the government might not
have produced some recordings. “I don’t think one of those reasons is that
it’s in the court’s vault and I didn’t come across it. I don’t think it’s
because I didn’t see something that’s there,” he said. “What that reason is
could be any number of things. I just don’t know.” The public defender and
U.S. Attorney’s office have been at odds since the initial revelations of the
tapings. That mutual antagonism has spilled over into a dispute over the
scope of Cohen’s investigation. The public defender wants him to examine
whether CCA routinely recorded attorney-client meetings and turned them over
to the government. The U.S. Attorney wants Cohen’s investigation limited to
editing out and retaining privileged attorney-client matters. The public
defender’s suspicions have been heightened by what it says are other
discrepancies in the government’s production of information to Cohen. For
example, it says, the government told the court in August that it was unaware
CCA had recorded, and not simply monitored, attorney-client meetings. Yet two
weeks later, it says, the government told the court that it had obtained 18
terabytes of surveillance footage from CCA, including recordings of
attorney-client meeting rooms.
Sep 8, 2016 kansascity.com
Recorded prison videos are ‘horrendous situation,’ judge says
federal judge in Kansas City, Kan., said Wednesday she will give wide
latitude to an investigation into recordings of phone calls and video of
meetings between attorneys and inmates at Leavenworth Detention Center.
Defense attorneys representing inmates at the privately-run federal prison
objected when they learned last month that their meetings with clients had
been recorded. Such conversations are privileged by law, and the prison had
offered repeated assurances that they would be private. On Wednesday, U.S.
District Judge Julie Robinson questioned federal prosecutors about recordings
they had obtained from the prison during a contraband investigation. Robinson
said a special investigation into the case would seek any violations of
prisoners’ Sixth Amendment rights and could end in sanctions against the
Kansas U.S. attorney’s office or dismissal of the contraband case. The judge
scolded prosecutors for rushing forward with the case, which she called a
“horrendous situation.” “You all need to get your act together,” Robinson
said. Prosecutors said they obtained the recordings inadvertently while
gathering evidence of a contraband ring at the prison that could involve as
many as 95 inmates and 60 others. Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Tomasic said she was overwhelmed with the amount of
material and made mistakes. A grand jury subpoena for all surveillance video
at the prison produced some footage of meetings between attorneys and clients.
Dozens of phone calls between attorneys and their clients were mistakenly
provided to other lawyers in the case. “It was messy,” Tomasic
said. “I know I’ve learned a lot from this and I think everyone in our office
has.” A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office said prosecutors did not
believe any criminal defendants would be harmed by the recordings. But the
judge said it appeared some inmates’ rights had been violated. The federal
Bureau of Prisons forbids recording in attorney-client meeting rooms. But the
company that runs the Leavenworth prison, Corrections Corporation of America,
insists that silent video recordings of inmate-attorney meetings “are a
standard practice” throughout the country and are used for prison security.
Last month, Robinson ordered the recordings stopped. Inmate phone calls are
recorded in the prison, which offers attorneys a system to request that
recording be disabled for them. But one defense attorney wrote to the court
Tuesday that calls between himself and a client in Leavenworth had been
recorded despite multiple requests that the recording be stopped and
assurances from prison officials that it had been. The case is symptomatic of
a failure to respect attorney-client privilege in prisons and jails across
the country, said Barry Pollack, president of the National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers. Several Kansas and Missouri jails have acknowledged
recording attorney-client meetings. Like privately-run facilities, they are
not bound by Bureau of Prisons rules. “What I think is particularly troubling
about it,” Pollack said of the Leavenworth case, “is you have a failure on
the part of the institution that is recording something that it shouldn’t be.
Here, they turned it over to the prosecutors.” “Anyone facing prison time
needs legal counsel,” he continued. “And essentially, they aren’t getting
it.” After setting the course of the
investigation, Robinson said she had recently been “troubled” to learn that
her staff had discovered the prosecutor Tomasic in
her chambers after hours, soon after a large package of evidence had been
stored in the judge’s office. Prosecutors said Tomasic
was only dropping off another piece of evidence, and had been let in by a
U.S. marshal. The U.S. attorney and the marshal apologized. But Robinson said
she was not fully convinced by the explanation. “It just doesn’t make sense
to me. It boggles my mind,” she said. The judge said all evidence will be
locked in a vault. Robinson said she planned to order the U.S. Department of
Justice to pay for the investigation, which is expected to cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
Aug 17, 2016 salinapost.com
Judge to appoint special
master to probe Kan. jailhouse recordings
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A
federal judge in Kansas has agreed to appoint a special master to determine
whether a private prison violated attorney-client privilege by video
recording meetings between inmates and their attorneys. U.S. District Judge
Julie Robinson on Tuesday asked attorneys to provide her with their thoughts on
the special master’s scope. The master would investigate defense attorneys’
claims that Corrections Corporation of America made video and audio
recordings of confidential conversations and passed some on to prosecutors.
Robinson said she didn’t expect to appoint the master until
next month. The practice at CCA — a private, for-profit company that manages
dozens of U.S. facilities — surfaced in a case over distribution of
contraband at the Leavenworth Detention Center in which audio-less video
recordings were subpoenaed by a grand jury.
Jun 9, 2016 ljworld.com
Former prison guard files
lawsuit alleging civil rights and ADA violations
A former correctional officer
for the Leavenworth Detention Center has filed a lawsuit against the center's
owner for alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with
Disabilities Act that occurred while she was pregnant. In the lawsuit filed
in Kansas City, Kan., federal court this week, Demonae
Serial-Starks said she was working as a guard for the Corrections Corporation
of America, which operates the detention center for the federal government,
when she learned that she was pregnant. Because of her condition, the lawsuit
claims, CCA employees intentionally discriminated against her. Her
supervisors and co-workers “made Serial's working conditions intolerable,”
her attorney, Ryan L. McClelland, claimed in the lawsuit. Officials from CCA
did not respond to questions submitted via email this week from the
Lawrence-Journal World. Serial is now 29 and is living in Arkansas, the
lawsuit said. In 2013, after informing her supervisors that her doctor said
she should only perform light-duty assignments because of a high-risk
pregnancy and should stay away from Mace (a brand of pepper spray), Serial
claims she was forced to work more difficult jobs. In addition, she was not
provided reasonable accommodations, including frequent bathroom breaks, the
lawsuit said. One time, according to the lawsuit, she was forced to stay in
the control unit for three hours after she told her supervisor she needed to
use the restroom. She was allegedly told that no other officers were
available to relieve her. After she was released from the “bubble,” as the
control unit is called, she urinated on herself as she was trying to get to the
restroom, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims that Serial was
finally told to take family leave early because she was pregnant and could
not work in the main prison area among the inmates; however, less than one
week after the baby was born, the human resources manager allegedly called
her and said her family leave had expired and that she had to return
immediately to work. CCA, the lawsuit, said, refused to extend the family
leave. She resigned, explaining to the manager that she could not return to
work in a hostile environment, the lawsuit said. After quitting, she filed
complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In March, the
EEOC issued Serial two Notices of Right To Sue for civil rights and
discrimination based on disability violations.
cjonline.com
Apr 11, 2016
Affidavit: Elaborate smuggling ring at CCA Leavenworth left inmates like
'zombies'
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom announced charges for seven people
for their roles in what prosecutors allege was an elaborate drug-smuggling
ring that moved methamphetamine, synthetic marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes
into a maximum-security prison in Leavenworth. Seven people were charged this
week in federal court for their roles in what prosecutors allege was an
elaborate drug-smuggling ring that moved methamphetamine, synthetic
marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes into a maximum-security prison in
Leavenworth. Beginning in September 2015, Jeff Stokes, a special agent with
the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, began investigating the drug trade within
CCA Detention Center, a private prison. Listening to phone calls from
prisoners to friends and family members, Stokes heard inmate Stephen Rowlette describe how the inmates in his cell block were
“blistered” and “high.” The inmates walk around like “zombies,” Rowlette said, and some inmates were “making a mint” off
the drug trade, according to an affidavit released Monday. To buy contraband,
inmates convinced family members and friends to send money through wire
transfers to Karl Carter. a fellow inmate, and several people outside the
prison, according to an affidavit. As Rowlette
allegedly told his wife, inmates in his cell pod were strung out on “real
deal drugs.” One inmate, Mark, spent $2,000 each week on illegal contraband,
he said. A pack of cigarettes cost as much as $150 and a half pint of vodka
cost $40, according to the affidavit. A pouch of tobacco sold for $100 and a
gram of methamphetamine cost $300. In addition to wire transfers, the inmates
would exchange hundreds of dollars in person. “The inmates instructed their
family and friends to fill out a large manila envelope with a law firm
identified on the return address,” the affidavit alleges. “Affixed to the
front of the manila envelope is a letter-sized white envelope inside which
the individuals put money wrapped in white paper so the CCA guards could not
see it.” Once inmates had enough money for the drug of their choice, they
would contact Carter. Carter or another inmate would put the contraband in a
sock, put the sock down their pants and meet the buyer in one of three places
inside CCA Leavenworth: the church, the law library or a drug abuse
counseling program. There, they would exchange drugs or alcohol for money.
Though inmates often had to pass through a metal detector before returning to
their cell, one inmate told Stokes that corrections officers ignored beeps
from the metal detector “90 percent of the time.” Still, the inmates needed a
way to get the drugs inside the prison and into their hands. That,
prosecutors allege, is where Antonio Aiono came in. Aiono, 28, was a guard at
the prison. According to the affidavit, he would bring contraband into the
prison and leave it behind in a mop bucket to be picked up by an inmate
working with Carter. Aiono brought the drugs in a potato chip bag or his
underwear. Alcohol would come in a Sprite bottle, Stokes discovered. The drug
trade proved profitable for Carter, according to the affidavit. A review of
his account at the prison found $15,890 had been deposited between October
2015 and March 2016. On Monday, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom announced charges
against Carter, Aiono and five others involved in the alleged conspiracy.
Aiono, of Platte City, Mo., was charged with conspiracy to distribute
methamphetamine, providing methamphetamine to inmates, providing synthetic
marijuana to inmates and providing tobacco products to inmates. The first two
charges carry maximum sentence of 20 years in prison each and fines of more
than $1 million. Rowlette, 35, and Carter, 41, were
charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, possessing
methamphetamine, possessing synthetic marijuana and possessing tobacco
products. The first two charges carry maximum sentence of 20 years in prison
each and fines of more than $1 million. David Bishop and Catherine Rowlette, of Sedalia, Mo., were charged with conspiracy
to distribute methamphetamine, providing methamphetamine to inmates,
providing synthetic marijuana to inmates and providing tobacco products to
inmates. If convicted, they also face more than 40 years in prison and fines
of more than $1 million. Lorenzo Black was charged with conspiracy to
distribute methamphetamine, providing methamphetamine to inmates, providing
synthetic marijuana to inmates and providing tobacco products to inmates. He
also faces more than 40 years in prison and fines of more than $1 million if
convicted. Alicia Tackett, 29, of Independence, Mo., was charged with
providing synthetic marijuana to inmates and providing tobacco products to
inmates. If convicted, she faces one year in prison and a fine of up to
$200,000. The charges announced Monday were the result of a seven-month
investigation by the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Secret Service, Kansas
Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service and Social Security
Administration, Grissom said. Grissom’s news conference is likely his last as
U.S. attorney. The 62-year-old announced Monday he is resigning his position,
effective Friday. Monday’s news conference marks the second time in as many
years that a guard at a Leavenworth prison stands accused of smuggling. In
August 2015, Michael Harston was accused of taking bribes in exchange for
carrying contraband tobacoo into the U.S.
Penitentiary in Leavenworth. That institution, operated by the Federal Bureau
of Prisons, is a medium-security prison. Harston, a resident of Kansas City,
Mo., was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and four
counts of accepting bribes. Harston also received payments from the relatives
of inmates through wire transfers, Grissom’s office alleged, and was caught
on video surveillance distributing tobacco to inmates.
Aug 5, 2015 kmbc.com
Correctional employees arrested after Edwardsville car
burglaries
Victimized want charges filed. I figure if somebody's
going to break into it, they're going to, but i
can't afford to replace the window so i don't ever
lock it. Peggy: loretta moore's
unlocked car is one of four burglarized early sunday
morning. The burglars didn't get anything, but loretta
says they sure tried. They went through the console. I think they were
probably looking for loose change. And they pulled the ashtray out. They just
more or less trashed it. Peggy: most of edwardsville
court was asleep at the time, but not della vinson. From her third floor window, she was watching
what the security cameras were capturing -- a man who'd gotten out of a white
pickup truck, rummaging through residents' vehicles. So i
just kept looking out the window and then he went from one car to the other
and i called 911. Peggy: della
was still on the phone with 911 when the suspects were leaving this parking
lot. She saw them heading out her to 4th street, and police weren't far
behind. They soon discovered the suspects were prison officers at cca, corrections corporation of america.
It's a private federal holding facility in leavenworth.
Tonight cca says the officers are on paid
administrative leave and further action could be taken later. No charges yet,
but residents here say they hope there will be soon for violating the
public's trust and trying to steal from older people in a housing project. We
don't have very much. We'd like to keep what little we got.
February 11, 2011 AP
The attorney for a therapist accused of stalking a soldier says her treatment
while jailed at a Leavenworth facility may constitute "cruel and
unusual" punishment. Rachelle Santiago is charged with stalking and
attempting to elude police at Fort Riley. Attorney Ronald Wurtz
claimed in a court filing Thursday that Santiago's anti-anxiety medication
has been reduced against the court's order. He says the combination of a cold
room, cold food and lack of medication is unreasonable, especially for
someone with a post-psychotic mental condition. His asks that the 43-year-old
Manhattan woman be placed at a mental facility immediately or at a halfway
house until a bed is available at one.
January 7, 2011 Kansas City Star
A Kirkwood, Mo., man charged in Kansas City with sex trafficking tried to
hire a hit man to kill his purported victim and a federal prosecutor,
authorities have alleged. Bradley Cook, 32, allegedly hatched the scheme
while he was incarcerated at a private jail for federal inmates in
Leavenworth, according to a statement prosecutors filed Thursday evening with
a federal appeals court in St. Louis. In a written statement, U.S. Attorney
Beth Phillips said her office took immediate steps to protect the victim and
the prosecutor upon learning of the alleged threat. “We consider it a serious
matter whenever there are allegations of anyone making threats against crime
victims or attorneys in our office,” Phillips said. Cook’s lawyer, Carter
Collins Law, responded in a court filing Friday afternoon, calling the new
allegations “dramatic,” “incendiary” and “extraordinarily inflammatory.” Law
criticized prosecutors for presenting them, without evidence, in an unsealed
public filing. “The government has never produced any evidentiary support for
this allegation in any court,” Law wrote. Cook and four others were charged
in September in Kansas City with sexually abusing and torturing a young woman
in Lebanon, Mo., then broadcasting the abuse online. Cook and the others have
pleaded not guilty. Defense lawyers in the case have said they plan to
investigate whether the alleged victim consented to the treatment as part of
a bondage and sadomasochistic lifestyle. The allegations of attempted
murder-for-hire came in response to an appeal that Cook had filed with the
8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that he be released on bond pending
trial. Prosecutors, who contended that Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Cordes
was a target of the scheme, filed the allegations to explain why Cook had
been moved from the detention facility in Leavenworth to a jail in Bates
County, Mo. Prosecutors alleged that Cook had attempted to give details about
his alleged victim’s location and information about Cordes’ family, home,
work hours and personal history to a “professional killer.” Cook also made
plans to create an offshore account into which $20,000 would be wired to pay
for the murders, the filing said.
October 7, 2009 Leavenworth Times
An inmate at a Leavenworth detention facility has been sentenced to more than
three years in prison for the attempted battery of a correctional officer.
Maurice Dickens was sentenced Tuesday in Leavenworth County District Court to
39 months in prison. This will run consecutive to a life sentence he is
serving for the state of Maryland. Dickens, who is in custody at the
Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center, pleaded no
contest in August to one count of attempted aggravated battery. The charge
stemmed from an Oct. 22, 2008, incident at the CCA facility.
September 23, 2009 Leavenworth Times
An inmate has been acquitted of aggravated battery charges related to an
October incident at a Leavenworth detention facility, a prosecutor said. The
not-guilty verdict came Tuesday in the trial of Joseph Bellamy. He had been
accused of stabbing two correctional officers Oct. 22 at the Corrections
Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center. The victims, Kennith Lajiness and Cory
O’Neill, survived the incident and testified during the trial. Bellamy won’t
be released from custody as a result of the acquittal. County Attorney Todd
Thompson said Bellamy already is serving a life sentence plus 48 years he
received in Maryland.
September 21, 2009 Leavenworth Times
A judge has denied a request for a change of venue in the scheduled trial of
an inmate accused of stabbing two officers at a Leavenworth detention
facility. The trial of Joseph Bellamy is scheduled to begin Monday in
Leavenworth County District Court. He is accused of stabbing two correctional
officers during an Oct. 22 incident at the Corrections Corporation of America
Leavenworth Detention Center. He faces two counts of aggravated battery.
Bellamy’s attorney, Kevin Reardon, argued Friday for the trial to be held
outside of Leavenworth County. The attorney said the county has four major
correctional facilities and everyone in the jury pool will have some
connection to prisons.
September 1, 2009 Leavenworth Times
An inmate has been sentenced to six months in jail for battering an
officer at a Leavenworth detention facility. Michael Matthews was sentenced
Monday in Leavenworth County District Court after pleading no contest to a
misdemeanor charge of battery. He won’t serve any additional jail time
because the sentence will run concurrent to a life sentence he’s already
received in Maryland. Matthews battered Michael Sullivan Oct. 22 at the
Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center.
June 30, 2009 Leavenworth Times
Two inmates accused of attacking officers at a Leavenworth detention
facility appeared Monday in county district court. Maurice Dickens appeared
in court for a pretrial conference. Dickens faces a charge of aggravated
battery for allegedly assisting in the stabbing of a correctional officer,
Cory O’Neill, Oct. 22 at the Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth
Detention Center, according to County Attorney Todd Thompson. Joseph Bellamy
appeared Monday in Leavenworth County District Court for an arraignment on
charges of two counts of aggravated battery. Bellamy is accused of stabbing
O’Neill and correctional officer Kennith Lajiness. The crimes are alleged to have occurred during
the same Oct. 22 incident, according to Thompson.
June 19, 2009 Leavenworth Times
Three inmates accused of battering correctional officers at a Leavenworth
detention facility were in court earlier this week. Trials have been
scheduled for two of the men charged for an Oct. 22 incident at the
Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center. The third
inmate will be back in court later this month for his arraignment, according
to County Attorney Todd Thompson.
October 27, 2008 Leavenworth Times
The Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center
remained under a lockdown Friday following attacks on two guards earlier in
the week, according to a spokeswoman for the facility. Spokeswoman Connie
Parish said the two correctional officers who were stabbed during Wednesday
night’s attacks remained in the hospital Friday but there was a chance one of
the men may be released later that day. Parish said the investigation into
the simultaneous attacks continued Friday. Weapons used by the attackers
still hadn’t been found at the private detention facility. “They continue to
look,” Parish said. The Leavenworth Detention Center houses inmates awaiting
federal trial under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service. The attacks
reportedly occurred at about 10:15 p.m. Wednesday in the day room of a pod
considered a high security area for male inmates. Three inmates were placed
in segregation following the attacks. Two were suspected of being involved.
The third was their cellmate, according to Parish. The Leavenworth County
Sheriff’s Office was contacted to help with the investigation with plans of
sending a case to the Leavenworth County Attorney’s Office for a
determination about criminal charges.
October 23, 2008 Kansas City Star
Two officers from the Corrections Corp. of America’s Leavenworth
Detention Facility are recovering today after at least two inmates assaulted
them Wednesday night. Connie Parish, a spokeswoman for the privately run
corrections facility, said the officers were doing well in a Kansas City area
hospital and their injuries do not appear to be life-threatening. One, Parish
said, had a small puncture wound to the lung, the apparent victim of a
stabbing. Neither will require surgery. Parish described the attacks as two
separate assaults that occurred about 10:15 p.m. in a high-security area at
the facility, 100 Highway Terrace in Leavenworth. The officers were making
rounds, checking on inmates in a day room, when they were assaulted. Parish
said that three inmates from the same cell were placed in segregation after
the assault, and that at least two were involved. No inmates were injured,
she said. Authorities are investigating the assaults and are looking for a
weapon or weapons that were used. The Leavenworth County Sheriff Department
returned to the facility this morning to investigate the assaults and
interview inmates. The facility has been placed on lockdown, Parish said, and
because of that, there has been no visitation.
April 27, 2007 Leavenworth Times
A man has been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison after he
orchestrated drug deals while an inmate at a Leavenworth detention facility,
according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office. Francisco Ortiz,
22, Kansas City, Kan., was sentenced Wednesday for using his 16-year-old
sister and other family members to deal drugs for him while he was awaiting
sentencing in a federal drug trafficking case. Ortiz allegedly orchestrated
deals by telephone while an inmate at the Corrections Corporation of America
Leavenworth Detention Center. In March 2005, Ortiz had entered into a plea
agreement to one count of possession with intent to distribute more than five
grams of methamphetamine. The agreement required him to cooperate with investigators
from the Drug Enforcement Administration. “What the defendant did not tell
the DEA was that he was trafficking in drugs while he was incarcerated at the
Corrections Corporation of America by using his 16-year-old sister,” Eric Melgren, U.S. attorney for Kansas, said in the release.
“Nor did he tell DEA agents that he was orchestrating drug deals, obtaining
profits and directing customers to meet with family members to make drug
payments — all while incarcerated on the original charges.” Investigators
retrieved the records of Ortiz’s telephone calls from CCA for April 2006
through July 2006. The records showed he had been engaging in multiple drug
transactions through associates and family members who were not incarcerated,
including his sister and his mother.
August 24, 2006 AP
A southern Iowa man has been convicted by a federal jury on charges he
threatened the life of a federal judge. Christopher O. Myers, 41, of Ottumwa
faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for
Sept. 5. Myers was initially charged in a three-count federal indictment,
which alleged that he mailed threatening letters to Judge Linda Reade and a
federal public defender in August 2005 from his prison cell at a federal
prison in Leavenworth, Kan. Reade, a judge in the U.S. District Court in
Cedar Rapids, testified Monday that she took the threats seriously. "I
think the general tenor of the letter suggested that Mr. Myers was
threatening to kill me," she said. Court documents said Myers was in the
Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center, a privately
run prison, which contracts with the federal government located in
Leavenworth, Kan., when a white business-sized envelope was mailed to U.S.
District Court in Des Moines addressed to Linda Reede,
a misspelling of the judge's name.
August 21, 2006 AP
Federal Judge Linda Reade testified today that a southern Iowa man sent her a
threatening letter shortly after she sentenced him to federal prison for
threatening other judges and President Bush. "I think the general tenor
of the letter suggested that Mr. Myers was threatening to kill me,"
Reade said on the witness stand in the trial of Christopher O. Myers. Myers,
41, of Ottumwa is charged in a three-count federal indictment, which alleges
that Myers mailed threatening letters in August 2005 from his prison cell at
the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan. Court documents said Myers was in the
Corrections Corporation of America Leavenworth Detention Center, a privately
run prison, which contracts with the federal government located in
Leavenworth, Kan., when a white business-sized envelope was mailed to U.S.
District Court in Des Moines addressed to Linda Reede,
a misspelling of the judge's name. Court documents say the return address
included the name Chris Myers, a federal inmate number — 11921-030 — and the
address of the CCA detention center in Leavenworth, Kan. The envelope
contained eight pages that appeared to be two threatening letters and cover
letter.
November 25, 2005 Leavenworth Times
A former Leavenworth man has been sentenced to life in federal prison for the
murder of three Leavenworth people. A federal jury spared Demetrius R.
Hargrove, 31, of the death penalty on Tuesday in Kansas City, Kan., according
to a news release from the U.S. attorney's office. Hargrove, who already is
serving a 35-year federal prison sentence for kidnapping and a weapons
violation, was found guilty Nov. 10 of three capital murder counts and one
charge of conspiracy to kill a federal witness. The conviction came after a
six-week trial. Two of the murder counts stem from the shooting deaths of
Elmer Berg Jr. and Misty Castor, Leavenworth siblings. The third murder count
stemmed from the July 25, 1998, death of Tyrone Richards. According to the
news release from the U.S. attorney's office, Hargrove attempted to murder
Kimbrel on Jan. 3, 1999. And on Dec. 31, 1998 and Jan. 1, 1999, Hargrove made
telephone calls to other conspirators from the Corrections Corporation of
America detention facility in Leavenworth to arrange the murder of Kimbrel.
April 12, 2005 Kansas City Star
Attorneys for federal kidnapping defendant Lisa Montgomery asked a judge
Monday not to give prosecutors copies of four documents seized recently from
her Leavenworth jail cell. Jailers searched her cell and took five documents
last month. Officials at the Corrections Corporation of America jail then
passed the material to the U.S. Marshals Service, which gave it to Chief
Magistrate Judge John Maughmer. In a court filing,
defense attorney Susan Hunt argued for withholding the records from
prosecutors. “(Montgomery) asserts the documents must be returned to her, all
copies destroyed and not provided to the government,” Hunt wrote. Hunt's
motion contends that prosecutors have agreed that the letter to “Anita”
should not be disclosed to federal authorities because it is addressed to
Anita Burns, an assistant federal public defender, and thus covered by the
attorney-client privilege. Montgomery's attorneys also contend that the Feb.
20 document should be covered by the attorney-client privilege. “This
document was prepared by (Montgomery) pursuant to a request of Ron Ninemire,
one of the (defense) investigators on this case,” Hunt wrote. “Mr. Ninemire,
in one of his visits, requested (Montgomery) write down certain information
for use by him and the attorneys in preparing this case.” The documents
apparently turned up in a March 4 search.
September 27, 2002
Keith Gabriel was intially incarcerated at the
federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., where he was diagnosed as being
HIV-positive. The Federal Bureau of Prisons began immediately to
provide Gabriel with medical treatment. In 1988, he was transferred to
another federal penitentiary. His medical jacket was transferred with
him and he continued to receive appropriate treatment for his HIV
condition. In 1990, he was transferred to a penitentiary run by the
District of Columbia in Lorton. That facility was operated by CCA under
contract with that district. When Gabriel was transferred to Lorton,
his medical jacket was not transferred with him. The medical history
that was sent did not explicitly state that he was HIV-positive. After
he was moved to Lorton, Gabriel said he did not receive any further medical
treatment until his HIV status was "rediscovered" in 1998. He
alleged that as a result of his failure to receive treatment, he suffered a
decline in his T-cell count. He also experienced the onset of premature
dementia and depression. He also contended that when CCA and the
District were alerted to his HIV status, both failed to search for and obtain
his medical jacket. He also said CCA provided him with an improperly
low dosage of one of the drugs he needed. Gabriel filed suit against
the Bureau of Prisons and CCA for negligence and medical malpractice.
The U.S. District Court, District of Columbia agreed with the bureau that BOP
was not a state official acting under color of state law. The CCA then
asked for dismissal, saying it was not a proper defendant because it wasn't a
public entity. The company said it could not be held accountable
in the same manner as a governmental organization. The CCA also said
Gabriel had not filed his claim within the required two years.
August 14, 2000
A guard pleaded guilty to drug charges after he was caught delivering a half
once of crack cocaine to an undercover officer. The guard admitted to
smuggling contraband into the prison for inmates. (AP, August 14, 2000)
Prison Health Services
Shawnee County, Kansas
Prison Health Sservices
September 20, 2002 Shawnee County corrections director Betsy Gillespie said
Thursday she was confident that jail medical and correctional staff members
didn't make any errors causing the death of an inmate earlier this month. Roy
Hardy III died Sept. 2 in the jail's custody. His family claims Hardy, who
had a congenital heart defect, died because medical staff failed to provide
him with his medication. Hardy-Smith declined to say whether the family plans
a wrongful death suit against the jail, but any lawsuit likely would include
Prison Health Services Inc., a Tennessee-based company specializing in
correctional health care. The county entered a contract with the company in
November 2001. The contract states PHS will cover court costs if inmates sue
the county and the jail on health care issues. An almost complete turnover of
medical staff ensued March 1, when PHS took over medical services. Only one
nurse who previously worked for the county health agency remained. Daily dose
Topekan Allen Stann was jailed for two days earlier
this month for a traffic violation. Stann knew he had to do his time, but
said he was upset because he didn't receive his medication, Celebrex, twice a
day for arthritis. "It was like cruel and unusual punishment," he
said. Stann did get Ibuprofen his first full morning at the jail and until
his release. He said he went to the jail the week before serving his sentence
to learn if he had to do anything to ensure he received his medication.
"I even went in early the morning I checked in to make sure about
it," he said. After his release, Stann said, he called the jail because
he was concerned about other inmates. "I told them while I was in a lot
of pain, it didn't kill me. But I said to them 'what if I had a serious
illness and didn't get my medication. I could have died.' I said that to them
and then found out about Mr. Hardy," he said. (Topeka Capitol Journal)
Reno County Jail Annex
Reno, Kansas
MgtGp Inc.
January 8, 2004
Former Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie and Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach won't pay $750,000 in restitution sought by the
state, a senior judge ruled Tuesday morning. Instead, the case will be
closed when the two have served their one-year jail sentences that end in
January - Leslie on Saturday from the Saline County Jail and Hertach on Jan. 31 from the Rice County Jail.
(Hutch News)
September 17, 2003
With prospects for a negotiated settlement dimming, a senior judge set a
trial date for Reno County's civil lawsuit against the former private
operators of its jail annex. Judge Michael Barbara set Oct. 29 as the
start date in Reno County District Court for the county's bid to recover
almost $750,000 in annex operations profits from MgtGp
Inc., which operated the center for four years. Former Reno County
Sheriff Larry Leslie and Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach
were partners in MgtGp. That alliance landed
the two men in jail for a year on two counts of misdemeanor conflict of
interest, for failing to disclose the contract. Both men apparently are
going to serve their one-year terms without offering a court-ordered plan to
repay the county, a condition of parole. In August, attorneys for the
two men and Reno County said they were close to a negotiated settlement in
the case. Barbara gave the two sides 10 days to reach an agreement, a
time frame that more than passed before the judge took action late last
week. Stan Hill, Reno County's counsel for the civil suit, offered no
comment on the trial date Monday. Efforts Monday to contact Leslie's
attorney, Mike Gillespie, and Hertach's attorney,
Steve Joseph, were unsuccessful. Gillespie is handling the case from
his new job with a Manhattan law firm, Seaton, Bell and Seaton. Leslie
and Hertach formed the partnership in 1997 to operate
MgtGp and the annex. The two men established
dummy corporations in Nevada to route the annex profits back to their
personal corporations in Kansas. Leslie and Hertach
were convicted in October 2002 of two counts of misdemeanor conflict of
interest, the result of a plea bargain from 21 original counts of
bribery. Leslie's sentence expires Jan. 3, 2004; Hertach's
28 days later. (The Hutchinson News)
January 10, 2003
Former
Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie spent his first day as an inmate
Friday, beginning his jail sentence for misdemeanor conflict of interest
in the county jail annex scandal.
Leslie and his business partner, Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach, were convicted in October of misdemeanor
conflict of interest. The two men
formed MgtGp Inc., a private company that ran the
jail annex until late last year. Leslie, as an elected official, was required
by Kansas law to divulge his "substantial interest" in MgtGp to Reno County commissioners. (The Hutchinson
News)
December 20, 2002
It came down to that old line from the film "Jerry Maguire."
"Show me the money." So when Larry Leslie and Gerald Hertach wouldn't - or couldn't - the result was a year in
jail for their illegal partnership as MgtGp Inc.,
running Reno County's jail annex. The people wanting to see where Hertach and Leslie's share off about 570,000 in annex
profits went were numerous. And the two who mattered the most - Senior
Judge Michael Barbara and prosecutor John Bork - didn't get any answers
Wednesday in Reno County District Court. "I wouldn't said it
played the main role in my decision, but it played a role, of course,"
said Barbara, who sentenced the two men to jail terms for conflict of
interest in the annex case. "The 285,000 your client received from
the annex profits - what happened to that?" Barbara asked Steve Joseph,
representing Hertach. "I don't know,
your honor," Joseph replied. Both times the men and their
attorneys offered no direct explanation, instead raising general claims of
financial ruin. "Jerry doesn't have $750,000 or significant funds
at all," his attorney said. Gillespie had little to say Wednesday
about Leslie's future, only noting that the former sheriff is close to
bankruptcy. Leslie isn't paying three creditors he owes a total of
$46,000, the attorney said, and had $300 in monthly disposable income after
he pays the rest. Leslie will voluntarily surrender his law enforcement
certification, Gillespie said. And a case against Hertach's
law license will be revived by the state's legal review board in Topeka,
Joseph said, now that sentencing has been completed. (The Hutchinson
News)
December 19, 2002
In a prepared statement, Kansas Attorney General Carla Stovall on Wednesday
defended her decision to accept a plea bargain in the Larry Leslie-Gerald Hertach bribery case. In the statement, issued by
prosecutor John Bork, one of Stovall's assistants, the AG said the state's
decision to accept two misdemeanor conflict-of-interest convictions
"serves the interest of justice by ensuring a conviction and establishing
restitution for the unlawful acts perpetrated by the defendants....
Stovall said the presumptive sentences in the original bribery cases filed
against Leslie and Hertach would have been
probation. However, Senior Judge Michael Barbara, angered by the lack
of a clear plan to repay $750,000 in annex profits to Reno County, sentenced
the two men Wednesday to a year in jail on each of the conflict-of-interest
counts. The plea bargain came under local criticism as a slap on the
two men's wrists. District Attorney Keith Schroeder, whose office
played a role in uncovering the allegations, said he will refuse to refer
cases to Stovall's office as a result of the light deal. (The
Hutchinson News)
December 19, 2002
Larry Leslie and Gerald Hetach will begin the new
year in jail, a senior judge ruled in Reno County District Court Wednesday
afternoon. How long they have to stay depends on whether they can come
up with their share of an estimated $750,000 in restitution to Reno county,
money "cheated" from local taxpayers in the private and illegal
operation of the county's jail annex, Judge Michael Barbara ruled.
Leslie, 59, the former Reno County sheriff, and Hertach,
56, a Hutchinson attorney, were sentenced to a year in jail Wednesday - six
months consecutively on each of two misdemeanor conflict-of-interest
counts. Both men were moved out of Reno County for security concerns,
Barbara said. The charges grew out of the two men's partnership in MgtGp Inc., a private firm that in 1997 obtained a contract
to manage the jail annex - without divulging to the Reno county Commission
that Leslie, then sheriff, was involved. A clearly angry Barbara
rejected pleas from the defense for probation in both cases, instead taking
issue with the two men's refusal to provide plans to repay almost $750,000 in
profits from the annex operation. A year owed to the people of Reno
County, Barbara said as he handed down the sentence. "Counsel
wondered today what good it would do to send these men to jail," the
judge said. "Well, a viable objective in the sentencing process is
viable deterrents. "Counsel has agreed that deceit was involved in
this case - political not criminal. But pure, deliberate greed was
involved." (The Hutchinson News)
November 27, 2002
By
signing off at the last minute on a plea bargain agreement in the Reno County
Jail Annex case, Attorney General Carla Stovall agreed Oct. 7 to toss out 21
felony bribery charges against three criminal defendants accused of bilking
taxpayers out of $570,000. Instead of putting the facts before a jury, the
lame duck attorney general accepted guilty pleas to two misdemeanors apiece
and endorsed potentially meaningless promises of restitution from former
Sheriff Larry Leslie, Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach
and MgtGp Inc. The outrageous decision not only
deepened this newspaper's disappointment with Stovall's job performance as
attorney general, it also set three dreary precedents that could have
undesirable long-term consequences on public policy in the Sunflower State.
Different laws The Stovall-approved plea agreement shows that county sheriffs
in Kansas, particularly those who have friends in high places, have the
latitude to operate under a different set of laws than other public
officials. KBI Director Larry Welch received documents tying Leslie to the
illegal payment scheme in the summer of 1999. Yet Welch disgraced his
position by failing to initiate an investigation of Leslie, a long-time
friend, until prompted a second time - 18 months, 19 payments and $140,250
later – by outgoing Reno County District Attorney Tim Chambers. The U.S.
Attorney's Office of Kansas took a similar hands-off attitude toward an FBI
investigation. Coincidentally, Welch's son, Lanny, worked there during that
time as the office's top criminal prosecutor. Chilling effect. Most of all,
Stovall's decision to cut a deal with defendants Leslie-Hertach-MgtGp Inc. will have a chilling effect on government
whistleblowers in Kansas. Consider that employees at the Reno County
Sheriff's Department expressed the greatest frustration with the plea
bargain. Several employees uncovered the scheme and tried to prompt an
outside investigation. "I don't think he got near what he
deserved," said Sherri Owston, the sheriff's
office manager. Former Sheriff Leslie directed Owston
to help him prepare invoices to bill Hertach for
supposed jail consulting services. (Hutchinson News)
October 18, 2002
Four years of memories came flooding back this week in the Reno County
Sheriff's Department. Secretaries to deputies were stopped cold with
disbelief when former Sheriff Larry Leslie pleaded guilty Monday to two
counts of misdemeanor conflict of interest for collecting $285,000 from a
partnership operating the county's jail annex. Leslie had been charged
with 21 counts of bribery. Leslie and Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach, partners in MgtGp
Inc., each face up to a year plus restitution and fines up to $820,000 for
their role in the partnership. "It's kind of made everyone relive
the whole thing," Sheriff Randy Henderson said. "Kind of back
to the old thing that we can do something wrong and get by with it because of
who we are. The frustration with plea bargain, which likely will bring
little or no jail time, was expressed by a couple of players in the Leslie
story. "I don't think he got near what he deserved," said
Sherri Owston, the sheriff's office manager. Owston was directed by Leslie to help him prepare
invoices that were used to bill Hertach for almost
$285,000 over the three years of their annex partnership. "I was
not at all happy about their decision to plead it down to a
misdemeanor," said Howard Shipley, a detective who made the first
late-night foray into Leslie's office to copy documents about the
partnership. "I think the original charge of bribery could have
been proven. We should have gone to court and let the jury make a
decision on that." "I am somewhat discouraged that the case
did not go to trial in order for the whole truth to come out," said
Capt. Dennis Radke, who heads the detective bureau. There's also a
consensus that Leslie let his officers and employees down by taking part in the partnership. (The Hutchinson News)
October 18, 2002
The business partners in a controversial deal to operate Reno County's jail
annex entered guilty pleas Monday to misdemeanor conflict of interest
charges. The pleas by former Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie,
Hutchinson attorney Gerald Hertach and the
attorney's MgtGp Inc. short-circuited Monday's
anticipated start of their trials on 21 bribery counts. The plea deal
also includes a "joint or separate" agreement to pay Reno County
$750,000 in restitution. The conviction falls under Kansas statue 75-4304 (b), which prohibits entering into any
contract "where any local government officer or employee, acting in that
capacity, is a signatory to or a participant in the making of the contract
and is employed by or has a substantial interest in the person or
business." (Hutch News.com)
July 2, 2002
The bribery trial for former Sheriff Larry Leslie and his alleged business
partners will remain in Reno County District Court, a judge ruled
Tuesday. Leslie, Hertach and MgtGp each face 21 counts of bribery. The charges
allege that Hertach paid Leslie almost $285,000
over three years in exchange for Leslie's recommendation that MgtGp run the county's jail annex. (The Hutchinson
News)
June 03, 2001
Reno County commissioners filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Sheriff Larry
Leslie and the private firm hired to run the county jail annex, seeking
repayment of more than $500,000 in profits they claim the two have split
since 1998. Commissioners also asked a judge to terminate the county's
four-year, $2 million contract with MgtGp Inc.,
signed in January 2000. Leslie is charged with accepting more than
$280,000 in bribes from MgtGp Inc. secretary Gerald
Hertach in exchange for persuading commissioners to
hire the company. Hertach is also named in
the lawsuit. Leslie had an obligation to disclose any business
relationship between himself and MtgGp Inc. when he
recommended the contract, County Counselor Joe O'Sullivan said
Wednesday. "The defendant's silence when they had the duty to
speak constituted a fraud upon the plaintiffs," the suit alleges.
Kansas Attorney General Carla Stovall contends that Leslie accepted payments
ranging from $4,000 to $15,625 between June 1998 and January 2001. The
county's suit claims the alleged payments were routed through a series of
Kansas and Nevada corporations, each of which is either owned or operated by Hertach or Leslie. The lawsuit alleges that Leslie
and Hertach "negotiated and agreed to a
proposal whereby Hertach would present, and Leslie
would recommend, a management agreement to the plaintiff for the minimum
security facility." (The Wichita Eagle)
May 19, 2001
Fellow law officers and a county commissioner said Tuesday they are shocked
that Reno County Sheriff Larry Leslie has been implicated in a bribery scheme
that authorities say involves more than $280,000. Leslie, who was
elected sheriff in 1992, was arrested Monday and charged with 34 counts of
bribery. He's accused of accepting $284,875 from a Hutchinson lawyer
and, in return, influencing county commissioners to hire MgtGp
Inc., the private company that handles the daily operations of the annex,
authorities said. Commissioner Francis "Shep"
Schoepf said Leslie advised the commission in 1998
that entering into an agreement with MgtGp Inc.
would save money. The alternative was to hire more county employees to
run the new annex, he said. The county in January awarded MgtGp Inc. a new four-year contract worth $612,000 this
year alone, according to the county. Schoepf
said he "completely trusted" Leslie's judgement. "It
seemed like he was giving us good advice," Schoepf
said. "When I heard about the charges, I was absolutely
floored. I have had so much faith in that guy." According to
court records, Leslie is accused of accepting $284,875 in 34 payments from
June 1998 to last January. The largest payment -- $15,625 -- was
allegedly made on July 15, 1999, court records show. (The Wichita
Eagle)
May 17, 2001
The private company at the center of the bribery case against Reno County
Sheriff Larry Leslie was incorporated just 13 days before the county awarded
it a contract worth more than $1.5 million to run a jail annex in 1997,
according to state records. But county officials said Wednesday they
weren't concerned with the newness of the company because Leslie vouched for
one of its owners, who had experience running a dormitory for nonviolent
offenders. Leslie, 57, pleaded innocent to 34 counts of bribery at his
first appearance before a district judge Wednesday. Hutchinson lawyer
Gerald Hertach, treasurer and co-founder of MgtGp Inc., which operates the annex, also pleaded
innocent to charges that he bribed the sheriff. The company also is
named as a defendant. Leslie is accused of accepting more than $280,000
from Hertach from June 1998 to last January.
Leslie, who is still on the job, earns $59,672 a year as sheriff. It's
also a unique relationship, said Darrell Wilson, executive director of the
Kansas Association of Sheriffs. He knows of no other county in the
state that contracts with a private company to run part of its jail. MgtGp Inc. is still operating the annex, County
Administrator Ed Williams said.
Wyandotte County Jail
Wyandotte, Kansas
Aramark
August 28, 2004
The Wyandotte County sheriff closed the county jail's kitchen for 24 hours
after an inspection revealed sanitary and storage problems. Joe Connor,
county health director, said the problems were discovered Thursday in an
annual inspection of the juvenile detention center. Part of that inspection
was the food service area, which also serves adult inmates. Brad
Ratliff, a spokesman for the sheriff, said the health violations included the
buildup of grease and the improper storage of items in the kitchen, which
serves about 450 inmates. The department has a three-year contract with
Aramark Inc. to operate the kitchen. The company, which is paid about
$669,000 annually, is responsible for the cleaning. (Kansas City)
|
