text:
NATCHEZ, Miss. (AP) — The attorney
for an inmate indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to commit murder
related to a deadly prison riot in Mississippi told a judge Thursday the
defendant wasn't ready to plead guilty as everyone expected. Jesus Beltran-Rodriguez
was one of five inmates indicted on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder
in relation to the May 20, 2012, riot at the Adams County Correctional
Center. He had pleaded not guilty to the charge May 22, but was scheduled for
a change of plea hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Natchez,
according to The Natchez Democrat. In an appearance before U.S. District
Judge David Bramlette, Rodriguez, speaking through an interpreter, told the
judge he had questions for his attorney. After a 15-minute conference, his
attorney, Damon Stevenson of Jackson, told Bramlette that he met with his
client Monday and Rodriguez had indicated at that time he was ready to move
forward with the plea. "Since Monday, it appears some issues have
arisen," Stevenson said. "He has been informed that mother is
gravely ill, and he is very emotional. At this time, I don't think he is able
to think clearly." Bramlette granted a request from
Rodriguez's attorney to delay the plea hearing. One guard was killed and 20
people were injured in the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately-run Adams
County Correctional Facility in Natchez, which holds immigrants convicted of
crimes while being in the U.S. illegally. Court records show
Beltran-Rodriguez is one of the inmates suspected of beating the guard,
Catlin Carithers, who died. The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates, most of
them convicted on charges of coming back to the U.S. after deportation for
being in the country illegally. The prison is operates by Nashville,
Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, one of the nation's
largest private prison companies. Several other inmates have been charged —
or convicted — with participating in the riot.
Three people have been indicted on
federal charges of conspiracy to commit murder related to a deadly prison
riot in Mississippi. Federal prosecutors say in a news release Friday that
Hector Miguel Diaz-Osuna, Ricardo Gonzalez-Porras and Jesus Beltran-Rodriguez
were indicted by a grand jury. Prosecutors say Gonzalez-Porras is also
charged with assaulting a prison guard. Two other defendants, Juan Geraldo
Arredondo and Ernesto Granados, are charged in the indictment with rioting.
One guard was killed and 20 people were injured in the May 20, 2012, riot at the
privately-run Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez, which holds
immigrants convicted of crimes while being in the U.S. illegally. Court
records show Beltran-Rodriguez is one of the inmates suspected of beating the
guard, Catlin Carithers, who died. The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates,
most of them convicted on charges of coming back to the U.S. after
deportation for being in the country illegally. The prison is owned by
Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, one of the nation's
largest private prison companies. Several other inmates have been charged —
or convicted — with participating in the riot. Gerson Benavides was sentenced
Thursday in federal court to 75 months imprisonment. Benavides was previously
convicted of rioting at the Adams County Correctional Facility. Benavides was
also ordered to pay restitution of $1.3 million. Humberto Cuellar was
sentenced Thursday 110 months imprisonment. He also was previously convicted
of rioting. He also was ordered to pay restitution of $1.3 million.
Correction officer Catlin Carithers was killed and 20 people were injured as
the riot grew to involve hundreds of inmates. They caused an estimated $1.3
million in damage. The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates, most of them
convicted on charges of coming back to the U.S. after deportation for being
in the country illegally. The FBI has said in court records that the riot was
started by a group of Mexican inmates, known as Paisas, who were angry about
what they considered poor food and medical care and disrespectful guards.
Paisas are a loosely affiliated group within the prison, without ties to
organized gangs, the FBI has said.
RIOTING AT ADAMS COUNTY CORRECTIONAL CENTER Natchez, Miss. Gerson Benavides,
age 30, Joel Oswaldo Ramirez-Nunez, 33, Humberto Cuellar, 41 Hiasom Ali, 36,
Raybel Granillo, 29, Margarito Munoz-Astello, 37, Ricardo Quintana, 27, Ruben
Coronado-Licon, 22, and Bertil James, 38, pleaded guilty on March 11,
2014 before Senior U.S. District Judge David C. Bramlette III, to one (1)
count of Rioting in a Federal Correctional Facility, announced U.S. Attorney
Gregory K. Davis and FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel McMullen. The offense
occurred on May 20, 2012 at the Adams County Correctional Center. During the
riot, several correctional officers were assaulted and one Correctional
Officer (CO) died as a result of injuries he received during these assaults.
Other COs were taken captive and held hostage for several hours by
participants in the riot. Total damage to ACCC was estimated to be
$1,305,142.00. The defendants were serving federal prison sentences at the
prison. All of the defendants with the exception of Ali and James are
citizens Mexico. Ali and James are citizens of Egypt and Trinidad and Tobago,
respectively. Each defendant faces a maximum prison sentence of ten years,
fine of $250,000.00 and supervised release term of 3 years. The defendants
will be sentenced on May 29 and June 12, 2014. This case was investigated by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with assistance from the Adams County
Sheriff's Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Lemon is prosecuting the case.
NATCHEZ, Aug 31, 2013 (Menafn -
The Natchez Democrat - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)
--Corrections Corporation of America told a federal judge earlier this week
the lawsuit alleging CCA is responsible for a correctional officer's death in
a May 2012 prison riot doesn't hold up to legal scrutiny. The family of
Catlin Carithers, 24, who died May 20, 2012, after being assaulted in a
seven-hour prison riot at Adams County Correctional Center, filed the lawsuit
against CCA in federal court in May. While CCA had previously filed a brief motion
to dismiss the lawsuit, the defendants filed a 10-page memorandum with the
western division of the U.S. District Court's Southern District of
Mississippi this week expanding their argument as to why the case should not
move forward. The memorandum states that the company disputes any allegations
of a breach of duty on its part. In the response, the company argues in part
that because Carithers' death falls under the Mississippi Worker's
Compensation Act because a third person or persons -- in this case, inmates
-- killed him because of his employment with CCA. While the plaintiffs have
claimed that the MWCA does not apply because CCA had a "duty to
control" the inmates, the company responded that that duty in and of
itself does not render the provision inapplicable and allowing a civil action
against the company would be entitling the plaintiffs to double recovery. The
lawsuit against CCA alleges that in order to increase profits, the company
maintained inadequate staffing, under equipped the facility and employees,
and failed to properly train employees, as well as treating inmates
"inhumanely" and -- while knowing that inmates wanted to harm
Carithers specifically -- placed him in danger regardless of that fact. The
company responded that it was "an overstatement" to allege CCA knew
inmates were going to harm Carithers and was warned they would harm him, and
even if it could be inferred the company was aware of the risk to Carithers,
it could not prove an actual intent to harm him. "To find that Defendants
acted with an 'actual intent to injure' Carithers, one would have to believe
that they intentionally understaffed, underequipped and undertrained their
employees so that the inmates would injure their employees," the company
responded in writing. "Such a diabolical scheme is not plausible."
The company likewise responded that it cannot be held liable for the assault
and battery on Carithers by inmates by cause-and-effect of "creating
inhumane conditions for the inmates, and a dangerous work environment for its
employees." The lawsuit against CCA likewise claims that the company
fraudulently concealed from Carithers the fact that he was on a "hit
list" compiled by disgruntled inmates, and that he would not have
entered the prison on the day of the riot had he known he was on the list.
"It is also entirely speculative that Carithers was killed by the same
inmates who created the 'hit list,'" the company responded in court
filings. "Fraudulent concealment 'must be pleaded with particularity and
may not be inferred or presumed.'" The response likewise states,
"There are no facts from which it could be inferred that Carithers -- a
senior correctional officer who was called in to help quell a disturbance at
the facility he worked at -- would not report simply because an inmate
informant mentioned he was on a 'hit list.'" ACCC is a 2,567-bed prison
that is privately owned by CCA and operates on a contract from the federal
bureau of prisons. It opened in 2009, and is located on U.S. 84 east of
JACKSON, Miss. — Ten people have
been indicted for their roles in a riot at a prison in Natchez that left one
guard dead, federal authorities said Wednesday. The indictments, announced
Wednesday by FBI Special Agent In Charge Daniel McMullen and U.S. Attorney
Gregory K. Daniels, are in addition to nine others previously charged in
connection with the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately-run Adams County
Correctional Center. The prison is owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based
Corrections Corporation of America, one of the nation's largest private
prison companies. McMullen and Daniels said the defendants were charged with
instigating, conniving, willfully attempting to cause, assisting, or
conspiring to cause any mutiny or riot at a federal correctional facility.
Indicted were: Gerson Benavides, 29; Adrian Romero-Carrera, 27; Carlos
Flores, 40; Ruben Coronado-Licon, 22; Ricardo Quintana, 28; Margarito
Munoz-Astello, 36; Bertil James, 38; Ian Jeffrey Reid, 43; Haisam Ali, 36;
and Raybell Granillo, 28. During the riot, several corrections officers were
assaulted and one officer, Catlin Carithers, died from injuries he received.
Other guards were held hostage for several hours. It took hours for
authorities to suppress the riot, which caused an estimated $1.3 million in
damage. Prosecutors have said that Marco Perez-Serrano, also known as Jesus
Fernando Ochoa, was the first inmate to attack Carithers during the riot.
Carithers died and 20 people were injured as the riot grew to involve
hundreds of inmates. Perez-Serrano pleaded not guilty in April to a charge of
rioting. A change of plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 13 in U.S. District
Court in Natchez. Inmate Jesus Beltran-Rodriguez, also suspected of beating
Carithers, and Humberto Cuellar, accused of taking a different guard hostage
during the uprising, are scheduled for trial Oct. 7. They have pleaded not
guilty to rioting. The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates, most of them
convicted on charges of coming back to the U.S. after deportation for being
in the country illegally. July 20, 2013 blog.gulflive.com JACKSON, Mississippi -- An inmate
suspected of participating in the fatal beating of a guard during a prison
riot in Mississippi last year is expected to plead guilty next month.
Prosecutors say Marco Perez-Serrano, also known as Jesus Fernando Ochoa, was
the first inmate to attack correction officer Catlin Carithers during the
riot at the privately run Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez on
May 20, 2012. Carithers died and 20 people were injured as the riot grew to
involve hundreds of inmates. Perez-Serrano is charged with rioting. A change
of plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 13 in U.S. District Court in Natchez.
His attorney, Joe Hollomon, did not immediately respond to a phone message.
The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates, most of them convicted on charges of
coming back to the U.S. after deportation for being in the country illegally.
The prison is owned by Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of
America, one of the nation's largest private prison companies. Several other
inmates have been charged with participating in the riot. Perez-Serrano was
indicted in February. He pleaded not guilty in April. An FBI affidavit filed
in the case said inmates stacked food service carts from the kitchen and
climbed on to a roof where Carithers was stationed with another guard. The
affidavit says Perez-Serrano was the first person seen attacking Carithers
when he hit him with a food tray. After other inmates joined in the attack on
Carithers, Perez-Serrano was seen hitting another guard with the tray,
according to the affidavit. The inmates used keys they took from the guards
to get into secured prison areas where more correction officers were
attacked, according to the affidavit. Perez-Serrano also was seen destroying
prison property, including a surveillance camera, and fought with members of
the special response teams that responded to the riot, authorities say.
Inmate Jesus Beltran-Rodriguez, also suspected of beating Carithers, and Humberto
Cuellar, accused of taking a different guard hostage during the uprising, are
scheduled for trial Oct. 7. They have pleaded not guilty to rioting.
Carithers family filed a federal lawsuit alleging that inadequate staffing
and poor treatment created a dangerous environment at the facility. In a
statement after the lawsuit was filed, CCA said it "takes the safety and
well-being of our staff very seriously, and we work diligently to provide our
dedicated correctional officers, chaplains, nurses and teachers the training,
security and support systems they need in this very challenging field."
"In addition to conducting our own thorough review, we have cooperated
fully with law enforcement throughout their investigation of the incident,
and we support full prosecution of those inmates responsible for this
disturbance," the statement said. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified
damages, said prison officials were told by an informant days before the riot
that the situation was becoming volatile and that the officials failed to
warn Carithers that he and other guards were on an inmate "hit
list." Carithers was off the day of the riot but was called in to help,
his family has said. The FBI has said in court records that the riot was
started by a group of Mexican inmates, known as Paisas, who were angry about
what they considered poor food and medical care and disrespectful guards.
Paisas are a loosely affiliated group within the prison, without ties to
organized gangs, the FBI has said. It took hours for authorities to control
the riot, which caused an estimated $1.3 million in damage. The prison's
special response team and the Mississippi Highway Patrol's SWAT team worked
to end the riot while state and area law enforcement officers, some from
neighboring Louisiana, helped secure the outside. Jul
6, 2013 necn.com JACKSON,
Miss. (AP) — A prison company wants a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit
filed by relatives of a guard who was killed during a prison riot in
Mississippi. Correction officer Catlin Carithers was beaten to death during
the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately run Adams County Correctional
Facility in Natchez. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Natchez
against Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, which runs
the prison. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, says CCA
"created a dangerous atmosphere for the correction officers by depriving
inmates of basic needs and treating them inhumanely." A motion to
dismiss the lawsuit filed Wednesday says, among other things, that CCA is
immune from the claims in the lawsuit because they are barred "by the
exclusive remedy provision in the Mississippi Workers' Compensation
Act." The argument is that workplace injuries should be compensated by
workers' compensation, not through litigation. "Carithers's death was
caused by the willful conduct of a third party (inmates) because of his
employment status as a correctional officer at ACCF and while working on the
job. Therefore, his death is compensable under the Act," the motion said.
The lawsuit says prison officials were told by an informant in the days
before the riot that the situation was becoming volatile and that the
officials failed to warn Carithers that he and other guards were on an inmate
"hit list." Besides the Workers' Compensation Act, the motion
provides an alternative argument to dismiss the lawsuit — that the
allegations fail to state a claim. "Defendants did not assault or batter
Carithers; inmates did. Moreover, regarding the alleged failure to disclose the
inmate informant's "black list" report, the Complaint fails to
allege the reliance, proximate causation, and legal duty requirements of a
fraudulent concealment claim," the motion says. Carithers was off the
day of the riot but was called in to help, his family has said. It took hours
for authorities to control the riot, which grew to involve hundreds of
inmates and injured at least 20 people. The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates
convicted of crimes while being in the U.S. illegally. The FBI has said in
court records that the riot was started by a group of Mexican inmates, known
as Paisas, who were angry about what they considered poor food and medical
care and disrespectful guards. Paisas are a loosely affiliated group within
the prison, without ties to organized gangs, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden
has said. Several inmates have been charged with rioting in the case. The
prison's special response team and the Mississippi Highway Patrol's SWAT team
worked to end the riot while state and area law enforcement officers, some
from neighboring Louisiana, helped secure the outside.
The Corrections Corporation of
America board chairman reportedly denied a request at Thursday's annual
stockholders meeting for a moment of silence in memory of murdered prison
guard Catlin Carithers. Monday will mark one year since Carithers was killed
after being called in on his day off to help quell a prison riot at the
CCA-owned Adams County Correctional Center facility near Natchez. Thursday
was the first stockholders meeting since the May 20 riot. Stockholder Alex
Friedmann said when he asked for the moment of silence, CCA Board Chairman
John D. Ferguson refused to honor the request, saying CCA had honored
Carithers in other ways. The meeting was at CCA headquarters in Nashville,
where approximately 30 people stood outside, some with signs, protesting the
privately-run prison company. The meeting inside was formal and businesslike,
Friedman said, as only stockholders, executives and staff are allowed to
attend. Friedman, who said he owns CCA stock in order to communicate issues
with executives, previously served a six year sentence at a CCA prison and is
president of a watchdog nonprofit group that opposes private prisons called
Private Corrections Institute. "In that one meeting CCA would not give 30
seconds of respect (for Carithers)," Friedman said. "It speaks volumes how
the company thinks of its employees and how it treats them." CCA spokesman
Steve Owen said in an emailed response that Friedman "would stop at nothing"
to disparage CCA and its employees. "Yesterday, professional corrections
critic Alex Friedman shamefully attempted to exploit the tragic death of
Catlin for his own personal agenda," Owens said. "These antics do not honor
his memory." Friedman said a number of other "activist stockholders" attended
Thursday's meeting, including members of the Jesuits religious order and
other religious groups. Owens said CCA has "honored his memory in a number of
ways, both at the Adams County Correctional Facility and throughout the
company." The family of Carithers filed a lawsuit this month in connection
with the May 20 riot saying CCA was negligent in Carithers' death. The
lawsuit cites information from an informant predicting the riot and suggesting
Carithers was on a "hit list." Friedman said he attended a CCA stockholders
meeting in 2008 when the board honored someone's memory with a moment of
silence, but he believed the board had a different chairman at the time.
"This is the only time, at the annual meeting, that shareholders could
recognize Mr. Carithers," Friedman said. Owen said CCA takes the safety and
well-being of the staff very seriously, and the entire CCA family has been
"deeply saddened" by Carithers' loss. A federal judge recently rescheduled
the trial of an inmate who is accused of being the first person to attack
Carithers during the riot, in which 20 others were injured, for Aug. 19. In
other CCA news, The Natchez Democrat reports that a new company will take
over operations of a facility in Wilkinson County, which is currently run by
CCA, in July. Management and Training Corporation, a Utah-based private
corrections company, reportedly received a five-year contract with the
Mississippi Department of Corrections to operate the facility.
At least one email allegedly sent
by an inmate informant to the chief of security at the Adams County
Correctional Center predicted the riot that broke out the next day resulting
in a guard's death. Other emails described a "hit list" of prison guards, one
of whom was the guard killed. In a lawsuit filed in connection with the May
20 riot, the family of Sgt. Catlin Carithers, the prison guard who was
killed, point to these emails and information from the informant as reason to
believe Corrections Corporation of America was negligent in Carithers' death.
CCA is the Nashville-based parent company of the Natchez prison. According to
copies of the emails obtained by The Clarion-Ledger, the security chief was
warned that the leadership of certain prison groups wanted to meet with the
warden to ask for changes in medical, food, recreation and laundry
arrangements. The emails appear to have been sent to the prison's security
chief from an inmate who had a cellphone inside the facility. At 10:14 p.m.
on May 19, the email writer says that the situation is more serious than
prison officials seemed to think. He indicated there would be meetings the
next day for the heads of the groups to list their requests to Warden Vance
Laughlin. The email characterizes one of the new leaders as having a "couple
riots on his belt," and the informant believed most of the inmates would
follow him. "People will be ready 4 war tomorow (sic), I am not joking," he
writes, going on to say, "Any officer that disrespect an inmate will be
punish (sic)." In the same email, the informant warns leaders would present
changes, and if the facility did not comply, they "will burn the place down."
He then warns that it would be a peaceful demonstration, but if the staff
interfered, it could "get ugly." He ends the email by telling them to get
ready, that this was serious, and could involve as many as 1,600 inmates. Up
to 700 inmates are believed to have participated in the riot. The prison
holds nearly 2,500 inmates convicted of crimes while being in the U.S.
illegally. CCA officials would not comment on the informant's warnings but
condemned the actions of the inmates. "CCA takes the safety and well-being of
our staff very seriously, and we work diligently to provide our dedicated
correctional officers, chaplains, nurses and teachers the training, security
and support systems they need in this very challenging field," said CCA
spokesman Steve Owen. "In addition to conducting our own thorough review, we
have cooperated fully with law enforcement throughout their investigation of
the incident, and we support full prosecution of those inmates responsible
for this disturbance. There is never an appropriate justification for an
inmate to instigate and participate in violence against a correctional
officer." Alex Friedmann, an associate editor at Prison Legal News, said he
corresponded with the informant for several months. He said the informant
told him when Laughlin met with two men he thought were leaders,
they assured him there would be no problem. What the warden didn't know was
that those men were no longer "shot callers." "CCA didn't know and these guys
didn't say they'd been forced out by the other inmates. They weren't aware
these guys had no say anymore and no power to control the guys in their
groups. The next day the inmates begin congregating on the yard," he said.
"The guys who were there at the time took a strong, hard response, and they
threw tear gas from the roof to break up the congregation, and they climbed
up on the roof and assaulted the guards throwing tear gas at them."
Carithers, 24, was on that roof. According to one of the emails, the writer
also told prison officials Carithers was one of several guards who was on a
"hit list," designated to be injured or worse if there was any trouble.
Inmates stacked food carts to get to the roof to attack Carithers and the
others. During the riot, fire also broke out. Carithers wasn't supposed to
work on the Sunday of the riot. He recently had received a promotion to
senior corrections officer that took him off the weekend shift. "They called
him in for backup," his brother Josey Carithers said at the time. "I know my
brother, and I bet he got in his truck and hauled butt to go help. He was
ready." Emails supposedly from the inmate to the chief of security a few days
later said he couldn't accept that someone as young as Carithers died because
of the warden's "stupidity." The security chief wrote back saying he felt
terrible about it because he was the one who called Carithers to come into
work on his day off, resulting in his death. The lawsuit brought against CCA
by Carithers' family is based on the claims that CCA was aware of the hit
list and was aware that officers on the hit list would be injured or
punished. Carithers was not warned when he was called into work that day.
"The inmate informant further asked why the Facility security officer put
Catlin on the front line when the facility administration knew he would be
'eaten alive' by the inmates," the complaint states. The complaint also
states CCA officials put their guards in further danger by maintaining a less
than adequate staff with underequipped and undertrained officers. In
addition, the complaint states, CCA "further created a dangerous atmosphere
for the correction officers by depriving the inmates of basic needs and
treating them inhumanely." The suit asks CCA for past medical expenses, pain
and suffering, emotional distress, funeral and related costs, future lost
income, future emotional distress, loss of consortium, attorney fees,
punitive damages, prejudgment and post judgment interest and any other
damages warranted under the circumstances. The family's attorneys did not
return calls for comment, and both the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office
said they could not comment on the ongoing investigation. The FBI has said in
court records that the riot was started by a group of Mexican inmates, known
as Paisas. Paisas are a loosely affiliated group within the prison, one of
many groups referred to as "nations," because they usually congregate based
on what country they are from or what language they speak, Friedmann
explained. Several inmates have been charged with rioting in the case. One of
them, Marco Perez-Serrano, has been identified as the first person to attack
Carithers when he hit him with a food tray. Carithers was beaten to death
with a lunch tray. 8 May 2013 Associated Press
Newswires JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The family
of a guard killed during a prison riot in Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit
Wednesday that says inadequate staffing and poor treatment created a
dangerous environment at the facility. Correction officer Catlin Carithers
was beaten to death during the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately run Adams
County Correctional Facility in Natchez. It took hours for authorities to
control the riot, which grew to involve hundreds of inmates and injured at
least 20 people. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Natchez
against Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America, which runs
the prison. A CCA spokesman didn't immediately respond to phone and email
messages Wednesday. CCA "created a dangerous atmosphere for the
correction officers by depriving inmates of basic needs and treating them
inhumanely," the lawsuit says. It also says that prison officials were
told by an informant in the days before the riot that the situation was
becoming volatile and that the officials failed to warn Carithers that he and
other guards were on an inmate "hit list." Carithers was off the
day of the riot but was called in to help, his family has said. The prison
holds nearly 2,500 inmates convicted of crimes while being in the U.S.
illegally. The FBI has said in court records that the riot was started by a
group of Mexican inmates, known as Paisas, who were angry about what they
considered poor food and medical care and disrespectful guards. Paisas are a
loosely affiliated group within the prison, without ties to organized gangs,
FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden has said. Several inmates have been charged
with rioting in the case. One of them, Marco Perez-Serrano, has been
identified as the first person to attack Carithers when he hit him with a
food tray. A complaint filed by an FBI agent says prisoners took food service
carts out of the dining hall and kitchen and stacked them on top of each
other to climb onto the roof, where Carithers was working. Carithers joined
CCA in 2009. His cousin, Jason Clark, told The Associated Press in an
interview after the riot that Carithers was engaged to be married and excited
about a recent promotion that took him off weekend shifts. He had been
trained in recent years as part of the prison's special response team and was
called to work Sunday to help with the uprising, Clark said at the time. The
prison's special response team and the Mississippi Highway Patrol's SWAT team
worked to end the riot while state and area law enforcement officers, some
from neighboring Louisiana, helped secure the outside. October 12, 2012 THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS August 14, 2012 Commercial
Appeal May 22, 2012 Colorlines.com May 22, 2012 Clarion
Ledger May 21, 2012 Clarion
Ledger May 21, 2012 AP May 20, 2012 CNN April 21, 2009 Natchez
Democrat March 15, 2009 Natchez
Democrat January 8, 2009 Natchez
Democrat November 3, 2008 Natchez
Democrat April 21, 2008 AP August 1, 2007 Clarion
Ledger 12, 2007 Natchez
Democrat May
3, 2007 Natchez Democrat JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A lobbyist
for a private prison company is resigning as warden of the Alcorn County
jail. Irb Benjamin has told Alcorn County supervisors he will step down Dec.
1. That action Thursday came several days after an inmate escaped from the
jail for the second time. Supervisors' president Lowell Hinton says Benjamin
told the board the jail might need fresher eyes after the escape. Benjamin,
who's also a former lawmaker, did not immediately return a call Monday.
Hinton tells The Associated Press that Benjamin was hired for a no-bid
contract to run the jail about a year ago. Hinton says he didn't know how
much the county paid Benjamin and Mississippi Correctional Management Inc.,
the company for which Benjamin is a lobbyist. The supervisors' attorney could
not immediately be reached. Central Mississippi
Correctional Facility July 16, 2005 Clarion
Ledger November 10, 2011 AP September 13, 2011 Tennessean September 1, 2011 AP August 18, 2011 AP July 8, 2011 AP July 7, 2011 AP December 1, 2010 Tennessean September 22, 2010 AP September 21, 2010 The
Tennessean September 20, 2010 News
Channel 5 February 15, 2010 Greenwood
Commonwealth February 5, 2010 Greenwood
Commonwealth February
5, 2010 Greenwood Commonwealth January 22, 2010 Tennessean December 9, 2009 Tennessean November 10, 2009 WSMV November 10, 2009 NewsChannel
5 October 30, 2009 Tennessean September 26, 2009 AP September 9, 2009 Greenwood
Commonwealth August 25, 2009 Greenwood
Commonwealth August 13, 2009 Greenwood
Commonwealth August 4, 2009 Greenwood
Commonwealth July 14, 2009 Nashville
City Paper June 28, 2009 Hattiesburg
American June 27, 2009 Greenwood
Commonwealth June 27, 2009 WZTV June 26, 2009 WSMV June 25, 2009 Nashville
City Paper June 25, 2009 News
Channel 5 February 22, 2007 WMC TV
5 May 23, 2006 Greenwood
Commonwealth October 25, 2005 Greenwood
Commonwealth October 4, 2005 Greenwood
Commonwealth September 28, 2005 ZWire September 7, 2005 Greenwood Commonwealth August 24, 2004 Greenwood Commonwealth May 7, 2003 November 6, 2002 October
11, 2002 October
10, 2002 October
4, 2002 September
20, 2002 September
16, 2002 September
6, 2002 September
5, 2002 September
4, 2002 September
3, 2002 August
30, 2002 August
27, 2002 August
27, 2002 August
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14, 2002 August
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1, 2002 July
31, 2002 August
30, 2002 July
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27, 2002 July
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14, 2002 July
8, 2002 East Mississippi
Correctional Facility "The prison is in chaos, with
conditions so dangerous — violence, filth, callous denial of prisoners' serious
medical and mental health needs — that the only meaningful remedy is an
injunction to protect all prisoners," said Margaret Winter, associate
director of the ACLU's National Prison Project. Officials at the Utah-based
Management & Training Corp. said they've made significant improvements
since they took over the Meridian prison in July 2012. "MTC is very
concerned about the well-being of the inmates in our care as well as our
staff and the community," said Issa Arnita, director of corporate
communications. "We have worked hard to identify areas of improvement
and we will continue to do so moving forward." On Thursday, the ACLU and
Southern Poverty Law Center asked the federal court to certify the class of
prisoners for the private prison. If a federal judge steps in, the lawsuit
would follow in the steps of class-action litigation brought against the
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility and the State Penitentiary's Death Row and
Unit 32. The case needs to go forward as class-action litigation, Winter said.
"No single prisoner acting alone can address all the problems for
everyone." This past March and April, former Washington State
Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail, an expert for the plaintiffs, inspected the
private prison over a period of several days. "East Mississippi
Correctional Facility is an extraordinarily dangerous prison," he
concluded in his report. "All prisoners confined there are subjected on
a daily basis to significant risk of serious injury." He visited where
some prisoners are kept in segregation, calling their conditions
"barbaric," especially to those suffering from mental illness (more
than 70 percent of the 1,200 inmates), he wrote. "They are the worst I
have ever seen in 35 years as a corrections professional." He said he
found defects in basic security, cell doors that wouldn't lock,
a lack of staff training and worse. "This is a prison awash in
contraband and easily accessible weapons, where severely chaotic conditions
of confinement and no rational, functional way for prisoners to get
legitimate issues addressed, put all prisoners as well as staff at ongoing
risk of serious harm," he wrote. Asked about Vail's allegations, MTC
officials responded they have only been "operating the facility for a
little over two years, and have made significant improvements in overall
safety and security and offender care. It's important to note that the
individual who conducted this report is the plaintiff's witness in a lawsuit
by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the Mississippi Department of Corrections."
In his report, Vail described "deep and systemic problems" known
"at the highest levels of the Mississippi Department of Corrections for
a considerable period of time. Those problems were identified and described
over two years ago in a letter from the ACLU to Defendant Christopher Epps.
MDOC has failed to take reasonable remedial measures and to put in place
effective monitoring mechanisms to end the degrading, dangerous, and abusive
practices at the facility." Corrections officials said Thursday they
don't respond to matters involving litigation. Jody Owens, managing attorney
for the SPLC's Mississippi office, said he's been horrified by what he's
seen. Two of his attorneys toured the facility, finding such things as blood
still standing on the floor of cells. A number of mentally ill inmates there
cut themselves. "No one should be forced to endure the dangerous — and
even deadly — conditions found at the East Mississippi Correctional
Facility," he told The Clarion-Ledger. Through this lawsuit, as they
have in the past litigation, "we are demanding that the Mississippi
Department of Corrections fulfill its legal obligation to end abuse behind
prison walls, especially in private prisons," he said. In his visit,
Vail said he found atrocious conditions inside the cells — lights that didn't
work, exposed wiring in cells, dysfunctional water faucets and toilets that
would not flush. "One man told me he had not had water in his sink for
three weeks," he said. "Another said he had been without water for
four or five days. Another told me his toilet had not functioned for two
weeks." A previous complaint against the prison alleged some prisoners
captured rats and sold them to others. Vail said one inmate showed him how he
blocked a hole in the wall so rats could not get out, others showed how they
blocked the bottom of their cells to keep the rats from getting in and
another talked of feeding the rats. According to the litigation, corruption
among staff members is widespread with them involved with gangs, extortion
and contraband, smuggling in drugs and weapons in return for payment from
prisoners. The ligitation talks of widespread sex among officers and inmates,
a "buddy" system where officers covered up the beatings of inmates
by other officers, the corruption of investigators and the rehiring of former
employees for excessive use of force. In November 2012, the president of MTC
toured the institution and was quoted as saying "the living conditions
were awful." In his report, Vail wrote, "The corporate president
was correct. Conditions in segregation are still awful today. It is tragic
that nearly a year and a half later, those units and the showers are still in
that condition." Allegations by ACLU and Southern
Poverty Law Center • Blood on the floor, lights that
didn't work, exposed wiring in cells, dysfunctional water faucets and toilets
that would not flush. • "A prison awash in
contraband and easily accessible weapons." • Widespread sex among officers
and inmates, a "buddy" system where officers covered up the
beatings of inmates by other officers, the corruption of investigators and
the rehiring of former employees for excessive use of force.
A prisoner at the East Mississippi
Correctional Facility (EMCF) told the counselor that his heart was hurting
and that he didn't have a reason to live. He was also having hallucinations.
As the counselor met with the prisoner in December 2013, he noticed that the
man was attempting to cut himself with a small, dull object. There was also a
long rope around the prisoner's neck. The counselor reached a conclusion:
This prisoner is not in distress. The counselor then simply walked away. The
prisoner would not see a mental health professional for nine more days. An
expert reviewing the case for the Southern Poverty Law Center would later
describe the incident as "beyond any deliberate indifference I have seen in
my entire career; it is the definition of intentional patient abandonment."
The prisoner eventually resorted to a tactic that others at this privately
operated, for-profit prison use to get help: He set fire to his cell. Two
days later, he was found dead in his cell – the apparent result of a heart
condition the staff at the Meridian, Mississippi, prison rarely took
seriously. And it appears that attitude at this prison – home to many
prisoners with mental health needs – never changed, if an entry in his
medical chart is any indication. The entry showed that his vital signs were
stable. He had been dead for 10 hours at that point. "I cannot state with
certainty that the blatant and callous lack of care that this 43 year old man
received during his last months at EMCF caused his death," Dr. Marc F. Stern,
a board-certified internist specializing in correctional care, wrote in a
report for the SPLC. "However, I can state that it deprived him of any chance
he had for continued survival." The SPLC in 2013 sued the state over
conditions at the prison and yesterday filed a motion to certify the suit as
a class action. If certified by the court, the lawsuit would benefit all
prisoners at the facility, including the majority who have
serious mental health needs. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Law
Office of Elizabeth Alexander, and Covington & Burling LLP are serving as
co-counsel. The original lawsuit describes a nightmarish, violent prison
where lights and toilets often don't work, prisoners rarely see sunlight and
go without showers for weeks, and floors and walls are covered in feces,
blood and urine. The prison is operated by Utah-based Management and Training
Corporation, which describes itself as the country's third-largest operator
of private adult correctional facilities. Health care is provided by Health
Assurance LLC, based in Jackson, Mississippi. "The hellish conditions that have
been allowed to fester inside this for-profit prison should shock anyone with
any sense of decency," said Jody Owens, managing attorney for the SPLC's
Mississippi office. "It's sickening that private companies earn profits
through the misery and suffering of mentally ill prisoners who can't get
their most fundamental human needs met. The people of Mississippi should be
outraged." The motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of Mississippi, Northern Division, includes hundreds of pages of
expert reports that give a glimpse into a dangerous and filthy prison that
left experts aghast. "Taken as a whole, the conditions in solitary
confinement at EMCF are the worst I have witnessed in my 40 years as a
forensic psychiatrist investigating jail and prison conditions," Dr. Terry A.
Kupers wrote in a report examining the prison's mental health care system.
"These conditions can accurately be described as torture according to
international human rights agreements and standards. They press the outer
bounds of what most humans can psychologically tolerate." Eldon Vail, former
secretary of the Washington State Department of Corrections, also found the
conditions in segregation to be deplorable. "They are the worst I have ever
seen in 35 years as a corrections professional," he wrote in his report. "It
is my opinion that all inmates confined to the segregation units at EMCF, and
most especially those with serious mental illness, are subjected to an
ongoing substantial risk of serious harm from the dangerous, filthy, and
degrading conditions there." The dysfunction at this prison literally hangs
in the air as the smell of smoke wafts out of segregation units where
prisoners have set fires. Thick cell doors are scarred with scorch marks.
When Vail visited the facility earlier this year, he found a "smoldering pile
of debris in the middle of the day room floor." Another expert found
makeshift wicks in the cells, possibly the only tools prisoners have to get
prompt attention from officers. Emergency call buttons in the cells are
either broken or unreliable. Even when prisoners get the attention of the
staff, it's unlikely they'll get the help they need. There are numerous
stories of prisoners struggling to get medical care. "There was not a single
medical chart I opened … that did not immediately reveal multiple serious
examples of dangerous to life-threatening defects in health care," Dr. Stern
wrote. "Every aspect and dimension of health care delivery at EMCF is
dysfunctional." This dysfunction is clear even in a small sampling of
prisoner experiences. A 28-year-old prisoner lost vision in his right eye
when he didn't receive his glaucoma medication. He was already blind in his
left eye. A doctor failed to respond to a prisoner's repeated requests to
discuss an ultrasound showing a testicular mass. The 25-year-old prisoner has
metastatic testicular cancer. A 64-year-old prisoner with schizophrenia and
tuberculosis infection was found to have diabetes in 2012, but the doctor did
not review the prisoner's lab reports or see the patient. The prisoner's
diabetes was untreated as of April 2014, and his vision has deteriorated. A
55-year-old prisoner wasn't sent to the hospital for days after correctional
officers used force on him. It wasn't until he started having seizures that
he was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with subdural hematoma from head
trauma. Other prisoners may be going without treatment because of the copay
they are charged for sick call requests. Often, prisoners pay copays for sick
call requests that don't result in a consultation with a nurse or doctor.
"There were numerous incidents in the records I reviewed that documented
patients in distress over mental health and psychotropic medication issues
but declined to write a sick call request because of the co-pay they would be
charged," Terry Abplanalp, chief psychologist of the Washington State
Department of Corrections, wrote in his report. The reports raise other
issues as well. For example, a prison van is often used to transport
prisoners to the emergency room, even in instances when an ambulance is
needed. During the first 10 months of 2013, the van was used in 125 of 168
trips to the emergency room. That means during those 125 trips, the private
contractors did not have to pay for an ambulance. "Based on the cases I
reviewed, many of these transportations by van were dangerous and placed the
inmates at risk," Dr. Stern wrote. Prisoner medical records are another
concern. One expert compared the medication records to "Swiss cheese" because
there are so many holes. Entries documenting rounds by personnel frequently
appear to be nothing more than a summary stating the prisoner is fine that
has been repeatedly copied and pasted. "I found, almost literally without
exception in each of the mental health charts I reviewed for patients with
serious mental health needs at EMCF that their charts were grossly
incomplete, unreliable, and in many cases with entries that were apparently
fabricated," Abplanalp wrote. Since prisoners can only get their most basic
needs met by setting fires, breaking rules or cutting themselves, there is
"an overwhelming number of unnecessary and dangerous use
of force events and abusive practices." Vail reviewed video of such
incidents, including an encounter where a prisoner was speaking to
corrections officials through the tray slot of his cell door. As the prisoner
complains about being "treated like a dog," an officer sprays his face with
pepper spray. "Such a 'sneak attack' completely destroys any trust the inmate
might have in speaking with mental health staff and will likely make the
prisoner much harder to manage in the future," Vail wrote. In another video,
a prisoner warns officers that another prisoner has asthma. He is sprayed
anyway. The wheezing prisoner collapses on the day room floor. The prisoner,
whose T-shirt is already spattered with blood, coughs blood onto the floor.
"This incident illustrates a complete callous disregard for the health and
safety of the inmate who was suffering from the effects of the gas and
illustrates the risk of substantial harm for every prisoner in the facility,"
Vail wrote. Even without these issues, the prison is a dangerous place. A
December 2013 video reviewed by Vail demonstrates that cell doors can't be
counted on to work. It shows an officer attempting to place a prisoner in
three different cells with broken locks. "This sequence would almost be
comical were it not for the serious risk of harm unsecure cell doors present
to the prisoners," Vail wrote. Vail also found the prison to be filthy.
Inmates within a segregation unit are apparently instructed to throw their
Styrofoam meal trays through their tray slot after eating. The trays land on
the day room floor, which may explain why prisoners complain of rats.
"[Prisoners] told me they block the bottom of their cells with clothing or
towels so that rats cannot get in," Vail wrote. "One told me he fed them."
Prisoners also appear to live for weeks or months in dark segregation cells
with broken or missing light bulbs. "During my tour of EMCF, a large majority
of the cells in the segregation units were dark in the middle of the day, and
most of the inhabitants of the cells were lying on their bunks in darkness,"
Dr. Kupers wrote. "I have never, in my 40 years touring prisons, seen anything
like this." Broken lights were even found in the shower area, forcing
prisoners to bathe in dark and dangerous conditions. Exposed electrical wires
were found in the shower area. In one dimly lit area, prisoners were in
danger of stepping out of the shower into dried blood. An expert touring the
prison also found blood smeared on a cell window and left there for days,
potentially exposing prisoners to blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis and
HIV. When an inmate worker was summoned to clean a blood-stained cell, he was
not provided with protective gear to guard against such dangers. But the
dangers at the prison shouldn't be news to Management and Training
Corporation. As Vail noted in his report, records from late 2012 show the
company president toured the prison and found conditions in long-term
segregation concerning. The pages of reports submitted to the federal court
show that little has changed. "Conditions in segregation are still awful
today," Vail wrote. "It is tragic that nearly a year and a half later, those
units and the showers are still in that condition."
Jun 7, 2014 capecodonline.com JACKSON, Miss. -- Open fires
sometimes burn unheeded in the solitary-confinement units of the East
Mississippi Correctional Facility, a privately run state prison in Meridian,
90 miles east of here. Inmates spend months in near-total darkness. Illnesses
go untreated. Dirt, feces and, occasionally, blood are caked on the walls of
cells. For years, the prison, the state's primary facility for prisoners with
mental illnesses, has been plagued by problems. When a previous private
operator, the GEO Group, left in 2012 after complaints to the state about squalor
and lack of medical treatment, hopes rose that conditions would improve. But
two years later, advocates for inmates assert that little has changed under
the current operator, Management and Training Corp., a Utah-based company.
Civil rights lawyers and medical and mental health experts who toured the
facility recently painted a picture of an institution where violence is
frequent, medical treatment substandard or absent, and corruption common
among corrections officers, who receive low wages and minimal training.
Photographs taken during the tour and obtained by The New York Times showed
charred door frames, broken light fixtures and toilets, exposed electrical
wires, and what advocates said were infected wounds on prisoners' arms and
legs, offering an unusual window into a prison at the center of a legal
controversy. "Photographs don't lie," said Margaret
Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National
Prison Project, which joined with the Southern Poverty Law Center to file suit
a year ago over conditions at the prison. "I've been doing this for more than
20 years, and I'm pretty convinced that there is nothing out there that has
been made public that is this shocking." The Mississippi corrections
commissioner, Christopher B. Epps, who won praise several years ago for
reducing the use of solitary confinement in the state, and the other
defendants have denied the lawsuit's allegations. Epps declined to answer
questions about the prison but said by email that conditions there had "improved
tremendously" since Management and Training Corp., or MTC, began running it.
"I have toured the facility and have seen the improvements firsthand," he said. "We are committed to running a
constitutionally sound prison and look forward to communicating that point in
court." But current and former inmates described an
atmosphere in which prisoners lived in fear of attacks by gang members
allowed to move freely through prison units and were forced to beg for basic
medical treatment. They said some set fires - using contraband matches or
loose wires, according to advocates - to get the attention of guards, who
sometimes ignored the flames, simply allowing them to burn out. Christopher
Lindsey, 28, who was released from East Mississippi in July, said in an
interview that he had gone blind after months of not receiving appropriate
treatment for the glaucoma he has had since childhood. "I was crying in the
cell, my eyes were hurting, bloodshot red, and I was slowly losing my
eyesight," he said. Willie Hughes, 49, who was
released in December, said in an interview that an infected sore on his leg
had become gangrenous from neglect while he was in prison, and that a doctor
had told him after his release that he narrowly escaped needing amputation.
The 1,362-bed facility is one of five private prisons in the state system;
Mississippi, like other states, has turned to private operators to cut costs.
But advocacy groups that oppose the trend say the for-profit companies often
economize at the expense of inmate and public safety. They point to private
prisons in several states that have had problems with violence, abuse or
escapes that official reports attributed to understaffing, lax security and
poorly trained corrections officers. In a deposition given in March to the
lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Matthew Naidow, a shift captain at
East Mississippi, said that conditions at the prison had improved since MTC
took over the contract from the GEO Group, but that low wages and high staff
turnover contributed to the persistence of security problems and corruption,
which he said were more prevalent than at other prisons where he had worked.
Correctional officers at the prison, he said, are paid around $10 an hour.
"If you're getting people off the streets from McDonald's,"
Naidow said, "you're going to have a long road ahead of you to retain staff."
Issa Arnita, a spokesman for MTC, said the company could not comment because
of the pending litigation. LaGrand Elliot, senior vice president at Health
Assurance, a Jackson-based company hired to provide medical and psychiatric
services for the prison, also declined to comment. Dr. Terry Kupers, a
psychiatrist in Oakland, California, and an expert on the psychological
effects of solitary confinement, toured East Mississippi with the plaintiffs'
lawyers in late April. He said the mental health treatment he saw at the
prison was severely deficient. Inmates were given little therapy and had few
activities, and interviews with prisoners and a review of records indicated that
many were forcibly injected with Haldol, a tranquilizing antipsychotic drug,
even though "a lot of those people were not acutely psychotic at the time of
the injection," Kupers said. Record keeping was
spotty or nonexistent, with a "complete absence" of
accurate diagnoses and no evidence of informed consent for treatment, Kupers
said. Mental health exams were sometimes conducted when inmates were asleep,
and self-injurious behaviors like cutting were an almost daily occurrence.
Medical care was also deficient, with inmates receiving delayed or
inappropriate treatment, according to a medical expert who reviewed inmate
records and was not supposed to discuss them publicly until a formal report
was released. One patient had a documented history of a slow-growing brain
tumor, but the tumor was not included on his list of medical problems at the
prison. A nurse noted that the inmate had reported having a brain tumor - the
prisoner "has a wild story to tell," the nurse wrote
- and ordered a muscle rub, ibuprofen and shampoo for him. At the time of the
review, the inmate had not been referred to a neurosurgeon, the expert said.
MTC, the third-largest private prison operator in the country, runs 24
correctional institutions nationwide and holds the contracts for three other
prisons in Mississippi. Winter, the ACLU prison project associate director,
said the Mississippi Department of Corrections bore the ultimate
responsibility for the inmates at the East Mississippi prison. Epps, the
corrections commissioner, and other department officials are named as the
defendants in the lawsuit. A judge
will consider later this year whether to grant the plaintiffs class-action
status. Current and former inmates said security was also an issue. They said
corrections officers were complicit in or turned a blind eye to contraband
trading, and ignored inmate-on-inmate violence. Hughes, who served time for a
drug offense, said lockdowns were frequent, as were stabbings and fights.
Corrections officers, Hughes said, often kicked food trays out of the hands
of mentally ill inmates and did nothing to stop prisoners from roaming the
units or carrying on a brisk trade in cigarettes, whiskey, cellphones and
other commodities. "That was big money," he said. "They wasn't going to stop it." Hughes said he was once sent on a cleanup detail to one
of the solitary-confinement units - known to inmates, according to the
lawsuit, as the "dead man's zone" or "dead area"
because corrections officers did not often go there. "Guys was throwing fire, setting trays on
fire, flooding the cells, and the guards were just sitting there like that's
normal, that's OK," he said.
East Mississippi Correctional
Facility is hyper-violent, grotesquely filthy and dangerous. Patients with
severe psychiatric disabilities go without basic mental health care. Many
prisoners attempt suicide. This video is the story of a young man who
succeeded. Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com.
EMCF is a cesspool. Prisoners are underfed and often held in rat-infested
cells without working toilets or lights. The prison is dangerously
understaffed, and prisoners routinely set fires to attract the attention of
officers to respond to emergencies. Without sufficient staff to protect
prisoners, rapes, beatings, and stabbings are rampant. And some of the most
sadistic violence is inflicted on prisoners by security staff. EMCF is
supposed to provide intensive treatment to the state's prisoners with severe
psychiatric disabilities, but instead locks many in prolonged long-term
solitary confinement – often for years – and denies prisoners even the most
rudimentary mental health care services. Medical care is grossly substandard.
One prisoner is now legally blind after EMCF failed to provide his glaucoma
medications and take him to a specialist; another had part of his finger
amputated after he was stabbed and developed gangrene. The Mississippi
Department of Corrections (MDOC), which ultimately bears responsibility, has
known about these conditions for years but failed to protect the health and
safety of prisoners. In 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union and the
Southern Poverty Law Center offered to pay for an assessment of the system,
but the Mississippi Department of Corrections rejected the offer. Today, the
American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Law
Offices of Elizabeth Alexander filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of prisoners
at EMCF. The conditions at EMCF are blatantly unconstitutional and we fully
expect to prevail in the lawsuit. We hope that MDOC Commissioner Epps will
meet us at the negotiating table very soon to finally end the horrors and
suffering at EMCF. May 30, 2013 clarionledger.com Mississippi's cash-strapped
correctional system came under fire again this week with the filing of a
federal lawsuit claiming "barbaric conditions" at a prison for the mentally
ill. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center
filed the 83-page complaint against the state Department of Corrections on
Thursday in the federal court in Jackson. It alleges numerous gross abuses at
the privately-run East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, which
houses some 1,500 inmates. Among the claims are that of a grime-covered
facility reeking of feces where inmates spend months in isolated darkness
without access to showers or working toilets. It says prisoners routinely are
denied medication, ignored by the guards, and use the rats that infest the
building as currency to obtain goods and services. "Each of these conditions,
by itself, places prisoners at a substantial risk of serious harm," according
to the lawsuit. "Taken together, they create an environment so toxic that
they threaten the physical and mental health of all the prisoners exposed to
them." MDOC spokeswoman Grace Fisher said the department doesn't comment on
allegations made in pending litigation, but Commissioner Chris Epps said in a
statement that "negotiating will be one of the options we will explore
regarding this matter." This isn't the first time the ACLU has sued over the
conditions at a Mississippi prison. The organization filed suit in 2002 due
to inhumane treatment of death row prisoners at Mississippi State
Penitentiary at Parchman and again in 2010 because of abuses at the Walnut
Grove Youth Correction Facility. The Southern Poverty Law Center was
co-counsel in the Walnut Grove case. Both cases since have been resolved. But
the situation at EMCF "is the worst I've ever seen," said Gabriel B. Eber,
staff counsel for the ACLU's National Prison Project, who was in Jackson on
Thursday discussing the case. "And I've been in prisons all around the
country." The ACLU-SPLC suit was filed on behalf of 16 inmates whose civil
rights allegedly were violated while in custody at EMCF. One of them, a
27-year-old man named Christopher Lindsey, reportedly went blind after guards
denied him access to treatment for his glaucoma despite his repeated pleas
for help between 2011 and 2013. Another inmate, William Eastwood, reportedly
was raped four-to-five times at knifepoint in February 2012 by prisoner who
snorted cocaine to stay erect during the ordeal. An officer summoned by
Eastwood's cries left when the assailant told him everything was OK, the
lawsuit says. Other mentally ill inmates have committed suicide after guards
ignored repeated warning signs and, in some cases, had listed them in good
condition hours after they'd died. Crime in the prison has become so rampant
that Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie asked the state for a full-time investigator
to handle the case load, he said. As lead law-enforcement agency for the
county, the department must investigate each felony occurrence on the
property. "There have been repeated violent incidents," said Sollie, who also
cited inconsistencies with the facility because of its revolving-door
management. Three different private contractors have operated EMCF since it
opened in 1999. The current operator is Utah-based Management & Training
Corporation, which was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. MTC also has
a state contract to run Walnut Grove and the Marshall County Correctional
Facility in Holly Springs. MDOC entered into all three agreements last year
after the previous private company, the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla., ended
its management contracts for the three facilities. MTC spokesman Issa Arnita
declined to comment on the lawsuit but said that, since taking over the
prison, the company has been "working very hard to improve the conditions and
have made a lot of progress over these past ten months." On Thursday, family
members of EMCF and Walnut Grove inmates gathered outside the state
Department of Corrections in downtown Jackson to protest what they called
inhumane treatment and the oversight of prisons by private contractors. Holding
signs with their loved ones' initials and a description of the alleged abuses
they'd suffered while in prison, the family members asked for justice. "I was
assured that while serving his sentence, my son would get the help he so
separately needs," said Katie Autry while choking back tears. "This turned
out to be false. Since my son has been in east Mississippi, I have seen his
mental state – his mental state got worse, not better." Autry declined to
name her son, providing only his age and initials – 28 years old and B.A . The state Department of Corrections lists a man of
the same age named Bilethon Autry serving a 24-year sentence for manslaughter
at EMCF. Autry said her son, who has bi-polar disorder and a form of
schizophrenia, had been denied medication for the first six months of his
sentence and repeatedly placed in isolation as a result of his erratic
behavior. "He has been in isolation, in chains, for the past three months,"
Autry said. "I saw him yesterday, and he looks horrible. He's lost probably
100 pounds." Fisher couldn't comment on Autry's situation, citing the federal
HIPAA privacy rule. EMCF Warden Frank Shaw was out of the office Thursday and
couldn't be reached for comment. EMCF was criticized by a national
correctional health-care expert in 2011 for inadequate psychiatric staffing,
according to the lawsuit. At the time, it had one full-time psychiatrist at
the facility. But one year later, the hours dropped to two days per week
after the state hired another for-profit contractor, Health Assurance, to
provide mental health and psychiatric services at the prison. The lawsuit
also alleges youth prisoners are housed at the facility alongside adults and
that, in at least one case, a 16-year-old was raped while in the facility's
general population. "We have a moral obligation to take care of our mentally
ill," said Jody Owens II, executive director of SPLC's Mississippi office.
"This is fixible." Owens said the ACLU and SPLC raised their concerns with
MDOC Commissioner Chris Epps last year but got nowhere. He provided a copy of
a May 15, 2012 letter reportedly sent to Epps detailling the problems and
asking for a response within two weeks, but none was received. Epps said
through his spokeswoman that he never saw the letter. "We have sat down with
the ACLU and SPLC on numerous occasions in the past and have taken their
suggestions on other units," Epps said in a statement. "Negotiating will be
one of the options we will explore regarding this matter." The department had
a $29.5 million deficit during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30,
and faces additional budget crunches next year. It's unclear whether funding
has had anything to do with the prison's current situation, but Owens said it
shouldn't matter. "Budget constraints," he said, "doesn't relieve
constitutional obligations." October 22, 2012 San
francisco Chronicle June 12, 2012 WTOK June 7, 2012 WTOK June 7, 2012 AP May 20, 2012 WLBT April 20, 2012 WTOK April 20, 2012 AP March 28, 2012 Vicksburg
Post November 2, 2011 WTOK October 31, 2011 WTOK June 27, 2011 Clarion
Ledger April 1, 2006 Meridian
Star March 31, 2006 WREG December 16, 2005 Clarion
Ledger November 25, 2005 WREG November 19, 2005 Meridian
Star October 29, 2005 Meridian
Star October 30, 2005 AP October 23, 2005 Clarion
Ledger October 22, 2005 Meridian
Star October 19, 2005 Meridian
Star October 19, 2005 Clarion
Ledger August 12, 2005 Sun
Herald August 10, 2005 Clarion
Ledger August 9, 2005 WAPT August 8, 2005 Sun
Herald April 11, 2005 Greenwood
Commonwealth February 26, 2003 August 21, 2002 August 23, 2002 August 21, 2002 East Point Christian
Academy Grenada County Detention
Center May 28, 2006 Daily Star November 29, 2005 Greenwood
Commonwealth November 29, 2005 Sun
Herald March 24, 2005 Sun
Herald March 22, 2005 ZWire Hinds
County Jail Jackson County Adult
Detention Center February 19, 2009 The
Mississippi Press September 27, 2006 The
Mississippi Press Jackson County Youth Court Marshall County
Correctional Facility June 7, 2012 WTOK June 7, 2012 AP May 20, 2012 WLBT April 20, 2012 AP April 19, 2009 AP April 5, 2001 August 8, 2001 March 28, 2001 Mississippi
Department of Corrections A company under contract with the
Mississippi Department of Corrections gave near perfect scores for health
care provided inmates at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility — just a year
after a federal judge lambasted MDOC officials in 2012 for conditions there.
"They have been derelict in their duties and remain deliberately
indifferent to the serious medical and mental health needs of the
offenders," District Judge Carlton W. Reeves wrote. Officials with the
company, AdminPros, defended their work, saying they delivered to MDOC the
information it asked for and that the company saved the department more than
$10 million. Prison health faces poor quality accusations: State officials
recently cancelled contracts with AdminPros in the wake of a 49-count federal
indictment against former state lawmaker Cecil McCrory and then-Corrections
Commissioner Chris Epps. The indictment alleges the company was paying
McCrory, who in turn gave kickbacks to Epps. Last month, McCrory and Epps
pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges in the continuing probe the
FBI has dubbed the "Mississippi Hustle."
Epps, who abruptly resigned last month from his $132,000-a-year position, is
accused of receiving more than $700,000 in bribes, including paying off a
beachfront condo. In October, The Clarion-Ledger published an extensive
expose on the corrections system in Mississippi, where gangs rule, corruption
festers and prison serves as what one inmate called "a college for
criminality." The House Corrections Committee will begin hearing
testimony on the matters at 9:30 a.m. Monday in room 113 at the state
Capitol. "There are a lot of questions out there," said Committee
Chairman Tommy Taylor. "I just feel like we need some answers." The
only matter the committee won't address is contracts, he said. Gov. Phil
Bryant has appointed a task force to examine all of the contracts signed by
the Mississippi Department of Corrections.Daniel Strick, vice president for
AdminPros, told The Clarion-Ledger that the Illinois-based company was
shocked to learn of the allegations that McCrory paid Epps bribes. "What
he did with his money was up to Cecil," Strick said. AdminPros officials
first learned of McCrory through an Alabama lawmaker named Richard Willis and
decided to hire McCrory because the company was new to Mississippi, he said.
"We're from out of state. We don't know anybody." McCrory helped
them with their work with the Corrections Department on Medicaid claims, he
said. "He had no involvement in anything else." The department had
more than a $1.1 million bill for an inmate receiving a liver transplant, and
AdminPros was able to enroll the inmate in Medicaid before the deadline
passed, saving the department $1 million, he said. "MDOC ultimately paid
$102,000, and the federal government paid $275,900." From 2009 to 2014, hospitals billed the
department for more than more than $37 million, and MDOC paid $3.2 million,
he said. At a minimum, AdminPros saved the department more than $10 million
and "potentially saved as much as $34 million," Strick said. Dr.
Gloria Perry, the department's chief medical officer, and current interim
Commissioner Rick McCarty asked them to create a request proposal for companies
to provide medical care to state-run prisons, he said After Wexford Health
Sources won that contract, AdminPros took on the task of monitoring that
care, he said. "Our expertise is in data management." By taking a
random sample and analyzing that data, he said the company is able to
determine if health care meets standards or doesn't. In this case, AdminPros
utilized a monitoring tool for Walnut Grove that Perry received from a state
agency that dealt with juvenile corrections, he said. "It was an
instrument she liked." He said it's very similar to the scores generated
by the American Corrections Association, which gave Walnut Grove a perfect
score in 2013 — a year after Judge Reeves called the prison "a cesspool
of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions." Until his arrest,
Epps served as president of the ACA. In 2011, MDOC gave AdminPros a contract
to take over the department's job of monitoring health care at the state
prisons. Two years later, AdminPros began monitoring that care at private
prisons, too. Despite Walnut Grove's health care woes, AdminPros praised
Health Assurance for "the high level of medical services being
provided." Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU, which along
with the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the Corrections Department for
conditions at Walnut Grove and East Mississippi, said she thought it was
strange no one seemed to know anything about the identity of AdminPros or
their qualifications for evaluating health care provided to the inmates. When
corrections officials balked at sharing that information, she became
suspicious, she said. "I kept asking, Who are these people? Auto
mechanics? A temp agency?'" Months later, when federal judge directed
MDOC to disclose the qualifications of the AdminPros monitors, she said the
lawyers' suspicions were confirmed: None of the AdminPros monitoring staff
were medical or nursing professionals. Asked about this, Strick explained
that the monitoring staff does have experience in "various health care
settings including psychiatric hospitals, behavioral health centers,
community health centers and residential treatment programs." Jody Owens
II, managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mississippi
office, said both Walnut Grove and East Mississippi have failed to be "sound
places for mental health care," but AdminPros "rubberstamped"
that care as proper. By failing to provide proper medical care to inmates,
"we're creating a cesspool of poor health conditions that will pour into
society once they get out," he said. In an April 21 email, Strick told
Perry, MDOC's chief medical officer, that AdminPros continued "to have
difficulties gathering necessary information for some of the performance
measures. We will be visiting Walnut Grove, East Mississippi and probably Marshall
County the first week of May to try to resolve some of the issues." A
day later, Perry wrote in an email she was glad the contract AdminPros had
for health care monitoring was going out for a bid. AdminPros won that bid
for the $173,000 annual contract. State corrections officials
disregarded risk to the health and safety of young prisoners at the Walnut
Grove prison, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves concluded in a scathing
March 22, 2012, report on the then GEO Group-run facility. The sum of
"these actions and inactions" by those officials, GEO and Health
Assurance, which was contracted to provide medical and mental health care,
"paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the
civilized world," he wrote. Despite these words, the Mississippi
Department of Corrections gave Health Assurance a contract to provide health
care at East Mississippi Correctional Facility, paying the company $12
million over the past three years, according to state records. In a lawsuit
filed against MDOC in September, the ACLU called conditions at East
Mississippi barbaric with a "callous denial of prisoners' serious
medical and mental health needs." Officials from the Jackson-based
Health Assurance, which was started in 2001, disputed such claims, saying
many inmates receive better access to quality health care behind bars than
they do back home. "The state gets an excellent bang for its buck, and
we're proud of the work we're doing," said Dr. Carl Reddix of Jackson,
managing partner for Health Assurance, who served briefly on the state Board
of Health. "Our staff thinks they're doing an excellent job, and we
agree." If medical care inside the prisons was as poor as being
asserted, "you'd expect the whole medical community to be up in
arms," he said. Dr. Terry Kupers, a plaintiffs' expert in the lawsuit,
found mental health care at the East Mississippi prison "grossly
substandard" for the more than 1,000 inmates suffering from serious
mental illness. "The conditions in solitary confinement at EMCF are the
worst I have witnessed in my 40 years as a forensic psychiatrist
investigating jail and prison conditions," he wrote. He noted that on
April 16, a mental health counselor concluded a dozing inmate was having no
hallucinations, no suicidal thoughts and no mental health issues. Kupers
called such an assessment "ludicrous. How can a clinician assess the
presence of hallucinations, suicidal thoughts and the patient's ability to
weigh risks and consequences when the patient is asleep during the
examination?" He wrote, "There seems to be a system-wide pattern of
this kind of false documentation, which is quite dangerous." In another
case, a 43-year-old inmate in 2013 was suffering from high blood pressure, a
severe cardiac condition, schizophrenia and other health issues so severe he
spent several months at the medical observation unit of the prison. In
November 2013, prison officials discharged him to an isolated cell. On Dec.
4, 2013, he reported hallucinations, had a rope around his neck and told a
counselor he had "nothing to live for." Nine more days passed
before another counselor visited him, reporting that the inmate "did not
appear to be in distress." On Dec. 17, he lit a fire in his cell to get
medical attention, according to reports. A nurse noted his blood pressure was
140/98. Normal blood pressure is less than 120/80. Two days later, a nurse
reported his vital signs were stable, concluding he was in no distress. The
problem? He had already been dead for 10 hours, according to reports. After
examining this case and others at East Mississippi, Marc Stern, former
assistant secretary of health care for the Washington State Department of
Corrections, concluded dysfunction "permeates every essential aspect of
the system; health care operations are broken at every level, and there is
massive evidence of deliberate indifference on the part of medical and
security staff at the facility as well as their supervisors." Stern, an
expert for the plaintiffs, concluded such extreme dysfunction "can exist
only if the statewide oversight system is also broken." In 2011,
Madeline LaMarre, a correctional and nurse practitioner expert, evaluated
health care at several Mississippi prisons, finding "serious problems
with health care services." The plaintiffs' expert called for meaningful
oversight of medical care inside prisons. "Until MDOC implements such a
program the medical and mental health (issues) noted in this report are
likely to persist; resulting in preventable harm, including deaths," she
wrote. Earlier this year, she returned to the East Mississippi prison, where
she found "medical care had significantly deteriorated," she wrote.
"That MDOC had taken no action to correct deficiencies in light of these
reports is truly shocking and demonstrates a callous indifference to the
serious medical needs of inmates." She said her review found that
virtually all of the prison's "health care systems are broken or
dysfunctional, resulting in actual and ongoing risk of harm to
patients." Problems she found included: •A 25-year-old patient with
metastatic testicular cancer who did not have timely access to urologist care
following an abnormal ultrasound that showed a testicular mass. •A 64-year-old patient who lost
his vision after undiagnosed and untreated diabetes. He had still not been
evaluated or referred to a retinal specialist. •A 28-year-old patient with
glaucoma, who was already blind in his left eye, lost vision in his right eye
because he did not receive his glaucoma medication. LaMarre wrote that she found a
physician spent only 10 hours a week at Walnut Grove — far from the 40 hours
called for by the contract. "This is grossly inadequate for a population
of almost 1,300 inmates," she wrote. "As a result, nurses perform
the majority of health care services to inmates." Reddix disputed allegations of
poor medical care, saying plaintiffs have made "outrageous assertions
that are refuted in the medical records." Other allegations by the
plaintiffs have also been proven untrue, he said. "They said inmates had
rats as pets at East Mississippi (prison), but nobody saw rats."
Plaintiffs submitted photographs of what were identified as rodent droppings
inside the prison. Reddix said Health Assurance has done well in treating diabetic
patients, but some unfortunately fail to change their diet or take their
medicine — just as they do outside prison. East Mississippi inmates who are
mentally ill receive about 10,000 visits a month from the mental health
staff, he said. Proof of good mental health care can be found in the lack of
suicides since Health Assurance took over in 2012, he said. If Health
Assurance was providing poor care, there would be a higher than expected
complication rate, he said. "Instead, it's much lower than you would expect."
Emergency room visits have also declined, he said. As proof of Health
Assurance's good work, Reddix pointed to a report by an expert appointed by
court monitors, Dr. Amanda Ruiz, who concluded that "although minor
opportunities for improvement remain, adequate mental health care is being
provided to the inmates of Walnut Grove." Plaintiffs' questioned Ruiz's report since
she relied on data from AdminPros for some conclusions. Gabriel Eber, staff
counsel for the ACLU, said the health care "we've seen in Mississippi
prisons is atrocious, and the responsibility lies squarely with the
Department of Corrections to ensure prisoners get the care they need. To
date, they have failed, and they continue to fail."
During 2011 negotiations,
then-Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said he couldn't get rid of
Mississippi's private companies running prisons "because of all the
money they spread around Jackson," attorneys told The Clarion-Ledger.
His remarks took place during the time when federal prosecutors say Epps was
receiving more than $700,000 in bribes, including a beachfront condo. On Nov.
7, Epps and former state lawmaker Cecil McCrory pleaded not guilty to
corruption charges in a 49-count indictment. Prosecutors have announced they
are continuing to investigate "pervasive" and "systemic
corruption" in the state. The push for private companies to run prisons
and jails goes back decades in Mississippi. After being elected Hinds County
sheriff, Malcolm McMillin remembered meeting at the Sun-n-Sand Motel with
then-lawmakers McCrory and Phil Bryant, who were supporting legislation in
the early 1990s for the state to take over running the jails and privatizing
them. Then-Gov. Kirk Fordice also supported the effort, McMillin said.
"Some sheriffs wanted to be rid of the damn jails." He was opposed to it. The measure didn't pass,
but private prisons did become a reality. In 2002 or so, then-Corrections
Commissioner Robert L. Johnson negotiated with Walnut Grove Correctional
Facility, a private prison, for a per-inmate cost. House Corrections
Committee Chairman Bennett Malone of Carthage "was right up in the
middle of the negotiations, which was highly improper, to increase the rate
for Walnut Grove," he said. Malone could not be reached for comment. The
facility was originally designed to hold inmates up to 18 years of age.
Johnson wanted to keep that mission. But Malone was instrumental in getting
the law changed so inmates up to age 21 were moved there, tripling the prison
population, Johnson said. "You can't throw a bunch of kids in there with
hardened criminals." As a result, corrections officials wound up with a
"big mess," he said. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center and
American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the GEO Group, which
by then ran the Walnut Grove prison, and the state Department of Corrections,
which oversaw all prisons. "While the private prison operators increase
profits, the young men imprisoned … live in unconstitutional and inhumane
conditions and endure great risks to their safety," the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit described the prison as "dangerously understaffed," with
a lack of training for officers dealing with young offenders: "Youth and
staff face threats to their lives and safety on an almost daily basis."
In early 2011, Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU, and Sheila
Bedi, then-deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, had a
meeting with Epps, which they say was also attended by Department
of Corrections officials, attorneys and consultants. They reportedly
discussed the prison conditions, not only at Walnut Grove, but also at the
GEO-run East Mississippi Correctional Facility, where the ACLU was conducting
an investigation. Because of reforms Epps had recently implemented at the
State Penitentiary at Parchman in response to ACLU litigation, Winter and
Bedi said they believed he might be amenable to reforms at the two privately
run prisons. Bedi said Epps gave her the impression he desired to hold the
private prisons accountable, but his hands were tied. She said she thought,
"This is a progressive reformer beating his head against the wall."
Winter said she asked Epps point blank, "Why don't you just get rid of
the private contractors? We all know they're part of the problem, not part of
the solution." Bedi said Epps went on to say that it was impossible to
get rid of the private contractors "because of all the money they throw
around Jackson." She said she thought Epps was talking about campaign
contributions and looked into the matter. Some contributions were made to
lawmakers, she said, but not in the amounts she thought. Reports filed with
the secretary of state's office show GEO had no lobbyist in 2011. GEO
officials did not respond Friday to a request for comment. Winter took Epps'
remarks to mean "the fix was in in state government because certain
people benefitted from private prisons." The remark stunned her, she
said, but nobody there "raised an eyebrow." Epps added not to
repeat his remark and that he would deny having made it, which struck her as
odd, she said. "Why was he saying something that was a big secret in a
room full of people?" In March 2011, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves
entered an order finding that the conditions at Walnut Grove "paint a
picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized
world. Court intervention, as proposed by the parties, is undoubtedly
necessary." The judge faulted Epps and the Department of Corrections for
"a lack of accountability and controls" over the private
contractors and approved an agreement for reforms that included removing
minors from Walnut Grove. Johnson said he believes reliance on private
prisons has gotten the state away from its primary mission of providing
"security, custody and control" for those behind bars. "Had
the state moved to take over Walnut Grove, a lot fewer problems would have
taken place," he said. "It was simply a profit driven operation,
providing profit for the folks involved in the project." Now Gov. Bryant
thinks privately run prisons still are a good idea: "Private prisons can
be effective if managed properly," he said in a statement.
"Mississippi is one of almost twenty states to utilize this form of
prison management." Nov 23, 2014 clarionledger.com From busting Al Capone for tax
evasion to catching congressmen in Abscam, the FBI has handled many famous
cases. The latest? Mississippi Hustle. Chris Epps unwittingly triggered the
five-year federal investigation that this month ended his career as
Mississippi's longest-serving corrections commissioner when he allegedly
tried to cover up a warden-inmate sex scandal threatening to tarnish his
newest pet project. It was the last straw for Leake County Sheriff Greg
Waggoner, who blew the whistle on Epps immediately after the 2009 incident
and thus opened the federal investigation dubbed "Mississippi
Hustle." The investigation, which is ongoing, resulted in a 49-count
indictment against Epps and Rankin County businessman Cecil McCrory for their
alleged roles in a massive kickback scheme in which Epps took roughly $1
million in exchange for nearly $1 billion in contracts to McCrory-related
businesses. Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges on Nov. 5 at the
federal courthouse in Jackson, where Waggoner stood alongside the team of
state and federal investigators credited with the crackdown. Waggoner had
declined to comment beyond a few brief statements at the courthouse, but on
Thursday he opened up to The Clarion-Ledger about his first whiff of possible
impropriety by Epps. Sitting in his large, wood-paneled office built with
inmate labor, Waggoner said it all started when McCrory came to town. The
former state legislator and longtime businessman had struck a deal with the
Mississippi Department of Corrections to open up a transition center for
inmates. Called Walnut Grove Transition Center, it would boast two separate
facilities to house men and women near the end of their prison sentences and
help them reintegrate into society. The center opened in mid-2009 amid much
fanfare by Epps, who promoted it as a creative way to cheaply house inmates
while reintroducing them back into society. Behind the scenes, though, it
allegedly played a key role in the kickback scheme. Through Epps, MDOC not
only leased from McCrory the properties to house the male and female units,
but also awarded McCrory the sole-source contracts to operate them, state
documents show. "It looked like everything new that happened with MDOC,
Cecil was involved in," Waggoner said. Meanwhile, McCrory paid off the
mortgage on Epps' nearly half-million-dollar home in a gated Flowood
subdivision, prompting Epps to tell McCrory he "could get anything he wanted
in the future from MDOC," the federal indictment says. The center housed
about 150 men and 100 women in dormitory-like settings. Although still
classified as inmates, residents worked outside the facility at pre-approved
job sites but otherwise stayed confined. Residents had to pay McCrory's
company, American Transition Services, about $20 per day for room and board.
That was in addition to the $6 daily per-inmate fee the company earned from
MDOC. Concerned citizens started calling the Sheriff's Department immediately
after the center opened, Waggoner said. Most complained that inmates roamed
the community unsupervised and that some spent entire weekends away from the
units. "They were not supposed to be out at all," Waggoner said.
"If I ran my facility like that, Epps would have shut me down, but it
seemed like there was no problem when McCrory did it." Then came the complaint that Walnut Grove Transition Center
Warden Grady Sims took a female inmate to a motel in Carthage and had sex
with her. Sims, who was the longtime mayor of the town of Walnut Grove, also
served as head of the transition center despite having had no background in
corrections. The sexual encounter happened on Nov. 26, 2009 — about one month
after he started his job as warden — according to a federal indictment
against Sims. Waggoner immediately reported the allegation to MDOC, which he
said assigned an internal investigator to assist his department in
investigating the incident. Together, investigators from both agencies talked
to the female inmate and gathered ample evidence to take to the district
attorney, Waggoner said. But before they could proceed, the MDOC investigator
entered Waggoner's office one day in the spring of 2010 and told him it was
over. "'We're closing the case down,'" Waggoner recalled him
saying. "I was shocked. I said, 'What do you mean?' You could tell he
wasn't happy about it but that he was given orders." Waggoner said he
believes Epps pulled the plug to avoid bad publicity about the transition
center, which he had touted publicly in news releases and newsletters for
nearly one year. Epps' attorney, John Colette, disagreed. "It's my
understanding that MDOC completed the investigation," Colette said.
"The investigation found wrongdoing, and they requested of the
contractor that the person be terminated. The investigation should be on
file." The Clarion-Ledger was not immediately able to verify the
existence of the completed investigation. Waggoner said requesting the
termination of a man who committed a felony doesn't end an investigation. The
investigation ends, he said, when the man is indicted and brought to justice.
"If you have knowledge of a felony and chose not to pursue it," he
said, "you're negligent in your duty." Dumbfounded about what he
believed was MDOC's abrupt ending of the Sims probe, Waggoner called U.S.
Attorney John Dowdy for advice. Dowdy confirmed the call to The
Clarion-Ledger and also said he contacted the FBI afterward to report the
situation. FBI agents then set up the first of what would become many
conversations with Waggoner and launched an investigation against Sims and
eventually Epps. They dubbed that investigation "Mississippi
Hustle." A federal grand jury indicted Sims in October 2011, on one
count of sexually assaulting an inmate and one count of telling the inmate to
lie to investigators about the encounter. Sims pleaded guilty to the second
count in February 2012 and was sentenced to seven months in prison. By that
time, investigators already had dug deep into the alleged kickback scheme
between Epps and McCrory but kept mum about their findings until unsealing
the federal indictment against the pair earlier this month. If convicted,
each faces more than 200 years behind bars. Waggoner, though, said more than
once during the interview that the investigation hasn't ended. A four-term
sheriff with gray hair and a quiet, serious disposition, Waggoner would not
elaborate on that subject. Instead, he leaned over his tidy desk and cracked
a slight, sly smile. "I don't think it's over," he finally said.
"I don't think the corruption stopped there."
MDOC Scandal Highlights
Privatization Problems Facing a federal magistrate judge in
Jackson, Chris Epps and Cecil McCrory made a curious pair. Until the news of his indictment
on federal corruption charges broke last week, Epps, 53, had been the only
African American director of a Mississippi agency, the state Department of
Corrections. Despite receiving his appointment to one of the most visible
posts in state government from Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, Epps was also
able to survive Mississippi's hyper-partisan government, later serving under
conservative Republicans Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant. McCrory, Epps'
alleged co-conspirator, seemed to have been a key cog in that system. A
former legislator who held a number of elected political positions as a
Republican, McCrory knew all the ins and outs of state government. During his
time in the Legislature, he served on the Joint Committee on
Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER), the very agency that
would later raise questions about McCrory's business dealings with the state.
Together, they allegedly had what one federal official called a decade-long
"criminal partnership" that involved bribes and kickbacks in
exchange for Epps steering business to McCrory's companies that contracted
with the Mississippi Department of Corrections. At their arraignment before
U.S. Magistrate Judge Keith Ball, both men pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Neither defendant gave statements in the courtroom or to reporters after the
hearing. John M. Colette, Epps' attorney, said he had not fully reviewed the
lengthy indictment and also declined to answer reporters' questions outside
the federal courthouse. Harold Brittain, the acting U.S. attorney in this
case, said the indictment reveals "systemic, invasive corruption"
at the MDOC—and people who advocate for greater oversight of the role of private
corrections companies in government spending agree. Business and Politics The
alleged activities outlined in the indictment began seven years ago, in
November 2007, when Epps signed a no-bid contract with G.T. Enterprises for
commissary services at state prisons. That year, McCrory paid Epps $3,000 to
$4,000 on about 15 occasions in exchange for the contract that McCrory's
company's had with MDOC. That contract was later transferred to St. Louis,
Mo.-based Keefe Commissary Network LLC., which resulted in a large profit for
McCrory, the indictment states. Keefe Commissary is a division of St.
Louis-based Centric Group, which operates several businesses that provide
services to jails and prisons in more than 30 states. Chaired by Andrew C.
Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings Inc., which owns Enterprise
Rent-a-Car, Centric is a privately held firm that reported just over $1
billion in revenues in 2012. Taylor, along with his father, Jack, who founded
Enterprise in 1957, are also influential players in
Republican politics. At the federal level, the Taylor family has donated $1
million to various Republican candidates and conservative causes since 2012,
including to the presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect
Republicans to the upper chamber of Congress. The Taylors as well as
Enterprise Holdings' political-action committee also donate heavily to
Republicans at the state level, mostly in Missouri, although campaign-finance
records reveal the Taylors have also contributed in other states where they
have business interests. Enterprise, Keefe and the Taylors personally
represent more than $25,000 in political donations to Mississippi
Republicans, including former Gov. Haley Barbour and current Gov. Phil
Bryant. Ann Ponciroli, a Keefe spokeswoman, said the company had no knowledge
of his role in the alleged plot before the indictment against McCrory and
Epps was unsealed. She added that Centric Group "paid fair market
value" to McCrory for G.T. Enterprises and that the company has not been
contacted regarding the Mississippi investigation. She also said Keefe ended
a consulting agreement the company had with McCrory on Nov. 6. 'Very, Very
Corrupt Industry' The companies connected to McCrory were also involved
in Mississippi politics. McCrory, who was a registered lobbyist for several
organizations after he lost his seat in the Legislature to fellow Republican
John Moore, has also doled out campaign cash. Most of his
donations—$5,500—went to Gov. Barbour, while Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov.
Tate Reeves also received payments of $1,500 and $1,300 respectively. Several
other Republican elected officials have received similar donations from
McCrory, including Public Service Commissioner Lynn Posey, Transportation
Commissioner Dick Hall, Insurance Commissioner Mike
Chaney. Former Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck also received contributions from McCrory as
well. A search of state campaign-finance records show that Epps made two
contributions totaling $225 to former Gov. Musgrove, a Democrat, in 2003.
When the Jackson Free Press asked Reeves' campaign manager, Justin Brasell,
about the McCrory donation, he said the lieutenant governor will pass it
along as a donation to the Girl Scouts of Greater Mississippi. Bryant told
the Associated Press he would make a contribution to the Salvation Army to
match the amount he received from McCrory. With the nation's largest private
prison operators earning more than $3 billion in revenue, private-prison and
government watchdogs say the opportunity for the brand of corruption alleged
against Epps and McCrory is great. "It's a very, very corrupt
industry," said Frank Smith, founder of the Private Corrections
Institute, which monitors prison privatization issues around the nation.
Smith said the profit motive of private businesses represents a magnet for
corruption that doesn't exist in public prison systems. In 2012, two
businessmen in Gainesville, Fla., were sentenced to federal prison for a
kickback conspiracy related a prison commissary contract in that state also
involving Keefe. In that scheme, federal prosecutors said Edward Lee Dugger
and Joseph Arthur Deese paid two high-ranking Florida Department of
Corrections officials $130,000 in kickbacks. According to court documents,
the FDOC officials arranged for Deese and Duggar to subcontract with Keefe
and the men would kickback a portion of the proceeds to the FDOC officials.
The scheme in which Epps and McCrory are accused worked in much the same way.
Sometime in 2008, the feds say, Epps asked McCrory to pay off the mortgage on
his home. Between July and October 2008, McCrory purchased two cashier's
checks totaling $200,000 payable to Countrywide Bank, which held Epps' home
mortgage. Later that year, Epps signed a lease between MDOC and College
Street Leasing to operate a new inmate transitional facility in Walnut Grove,
Miss., where MDOC has a prison that Utah-based MTC runs. In 2012, MTC hired
McCrory as a consultant earning $12,000 per month. In a statement to news
media, MTC communications directory Issa Arnita said the company "hired
Mr. McCrory as a consultant because of his many years of experience working
in the state." Arnita added that MTC regularly hires consultants in
states where they contract. "At no time did Mr. Epps instruct or mandate
MTC to hire Mr. McCrory. In light of the indictment, MTC cancelled its
contract with Mr. McCrory last week," Arnita said. No Oversight It's
unclear when the alleged Epps-McCrory plan might have come to light.
Mississippi State Auditor Stacey Pickering said his office began receiving
complaints around 201l, including one from the sheriff of Leake County, where
Walnut Grove is located. Sheriff Greg Waggoner confirmed that he filed a
complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but did not provide
additional details. Pickering called the charges "a black eye on the
state." In the meantime, Gov. Phil Bryant has ordered a review of all
MDOC contracts. That includes negotiations on four private prison contracts,
which MDOC terminated earlier this year to invite new proposals in hopes of
saving money. Utah-based MTC, which had been running the prisons, will
continue to manage the facilities under their original contract and plans to
rebid if new proposals are sought. MDOC officials said that an initial review
resulted in the termination of two contracts with Adminpros LLC, of which
McCrory was an owner. Despite PEER's criticism of Epps' no-bid contract for
commissary services in 2011, policymakers failed then to take action on the
report. Rick Ward, a former official with the Mississippi Gaming Commission,
called PEER, which performs thorough investigations but lacks any enforcement
power, a paper tiger. "The problems is you've
got members of the Legislature on the commission—that's like the fox guarding
the henhouse," Ward said. "It's a waste of our taxpayer
Jimmie E. Gates, The
Clarion-Ledger 2:25 p.m. CST November 14, 2014 The finance manager of the private
run East Mississippi Corrections Facility in Meridian is the same person that
Gov. Haley Barbour pardoned in January 2012 for embezzlement. A woman
convicted of embezzlement and later pardoned by Gov. Haley Barbour is now the
finance manager of the private run East Mississippi Correctional Facility in
Meridian. Jessie Octavia Houston has worked at the private prison since July
2012. A federal lawsuit was recently filed over conditions at East Mississippi
Correctional Facility, which houses many suffering from mental illness. The
lawsuit calls the prison "barbaric" and said inmates are beaten,
exploited and mistreated by gangs and others. Houston couldn't be reached for
comment. A message was left on her voicemail at East Mississippi Correctional
Facility. Utah-based Management & Training Corp. took over the Meridian
prison in July 2012. MTC is responsible for hiring the personnel. "While
MTC does not comment on personnel matters, it's our policy to submit requests
for background checks to the Mississippi Department of Corrections for all
new hires," said MTC spokesman Issa Arnita. "When there's a
question about the results of a background check, we carefully consider
whether or not to hire an individual," Arnita said. "In reference
to this particular case, we believe the granting of an unconditional pardon
fully restores an individual's civil rights that were lost after a conviction
and restores the person's innocence as though he or she never committed a crime."
Houston was one of numerous people with a criminal record who Barbour
pardoned or gave clemency to as he was leaving office. Records show Houston,
42, was sentenced in September 2002 to 60 months of probation. Her probation
ended in 2007. The Clarion-Ledger was unable to find out how much money
Houston was convicted of embezzling. An employee in the Lauderdale County
Circuit Clerk's office said that technically there is no criminal record of
Houston anymore in the clerk's office since she received a full and complete
pardon. Legislation passed last year said government agencies or public
bodies can't hire people convicted of government embezzlement for positions
in which they would handle money. It was amended this year. State Sen. Briggs
Hopson, R-Vicksburg, who authored this year's bill, to make it pply to
existing public employees or future employees. "We don't want them back
on the public dole," Hopson said. But the bill wouldn't apply to Houston
since she wouldn't be considered a public employee and it's not known whether
her embezzlement case involved public funds. "We must be diligent in
protecting the taxpayers' money, which is why the legislature recently passed
a law prohibiting those convicted of embezzlement from working in a public capacity,"
said state Sen. Brice Wiggins, a former prosecutor. "That being said, we
can't legislate every conceivable scenario. At some point, those who want to
do wrong will find a way no matter how many laws we pass." Wiggins said
private businesses, are just that, private and who
they choose to hire and fire is their business. "I would hope, however,
that if a private company intends to do business with the state that it take the necessary precautions to protect the taxpayers'
interest," Wiggins said. Nov 11, 2014 clarionledger.com One of Mississippi Department of
Corrections' largest contractors confirmed claims in a 49-count federal
indictment against former Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps and Rankin County
businessman Cecil McCrory. Utah-based Management & Training Corporation
said in a lengthy statement issued Monday that immediately after winning
contracts to run three Mississippi prisons in the summer of 2012, Epps
recommended the company hire McCrory as a $12,000-per-month consultant. The
men allegedly then split those payments as part of a massive kickback scheme
in which McCrory paid Epps nearly $1 million in exchange for nearly $1
billion in contracts benefiting his various business interests, according to
the indictment. Epps and McCrory both pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal
court. Each could face more than 200 years behind bars if convicted. "We
deeply regret that in this case we didn't have any idea that improprieties
may have taken place, especially in light of the significant allegations in
the indictment," MTC spokesman Issa Arnita said in the statement.
According to the indictment, "Epps had personally negotiated McCrory's
consulting fee, telling McCrory later, 'I got us $12,000 per month.' " Arnita confirmed that "MTC paid Mr. McCrory
$12,000 per month for his work, after Mr. Epps told us that is what others
had been paying him." The company ended its relationship with McCrory
last week, Arnita said. Epps signed his first contract with MTC to operate
Marshall County Correctional Facility, effective Aug. 13, 2012, according to
documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. Eight days later, the indictment
states, McCrory wired $34,000 from his bank to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage to
pay down the loan on Epps' beachfront condo in Biloxi. Less than a month
after that payment, Epps signed another contract with MTC, on Sept. 14, 2012,
to operate East Mississippi Correctional Facility. Eleven days later, McCrory
wired $14,000 from his bank to Well Fargo. And on Oct. 18, Epps signed yet
another contract with MTC, this time to operate East Mississippi Correctional
Facility. Although Epps recommended MTC hire McCrory, he did not mandate nor
require it, Arnita said. "MTC hired Mr. McCrory as a consultant because
of his many years of experience working in the state," Arnita said.
"Mr. McCrory had been working with the previous prison contractor and
other vendors so MTC felt his services would be beneficial given his
knowledge and experience." Arnita also said MTC won the contracts
through a "competitive procurement process where multiple companies were
invited to tour facilities and submit bids." The first payment to
McCrory was sent in July 2012, Arnita said, adding that although the
contracts were executed later in the summer, they actually were awarded in
early June. From July 2012 through early November, McCrory and Epps would
have split $336,000. MTC won a fourth contract in July 2013 to operate
Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, just five months after yet another
wire transfer from McCrory — this time for $40,000 to Epps' Edward Jones
investment account. Altogether, the state Department of Corrections has paid
MTC $114,643,308 since August 2013, according to the state's transparency
website and SeeTheSpending.org, a website operated by the Mississippi Center
for Public Policy that tracks the spending of public dollars. It's unclear
how much longer the company will retain its contracts, though. Even before
Gov. Phil Bryant's announcement on Thursday that the state would rebid all
contracts held by firms cited in the indictment, Epps already had ordered
MTC's contracts to be rebid. Epps had said in an August news release that the
four facilities required more security staff and that he was rebidding the
contracts, which would go into effect Dec. 1. MTC and New Jersey-based
Community Education Centers both had bid, but Bryant suspended the process.
MTC continues to run the four facilities in the meantime. "We fully
support the government's investigation to learn what happened and to take
appropriate action," Arnita said. "We also believe the state of
Mississippi made the right decision in reviewing all current corrections
contracts including suspending the procurement process for the four private
prison contracts which we hold." FULL STATEMENT FROM MTC: We're saddened, surprised and
disappointed by the allegations against former Commissioner Chris Epps. MTC
was hired in 2012 to operate three prisons for the state after a competitive
procurement process where multiple companies were invited to tour facilities
and submit bids. MTC was brought in with the primary objective of improving
the overall operations of these facilities. In 2013, we submitted a proposal
to operate a fourth prison for the state during an open and competitive
procurement (RFP 13-005) with the same mission. MTC worked very closely with
Mr. Epps over the last two years in implementing changes to these facilities
that would improve security and the treatment of offenders. He was very
involved in the management of our four contracts. He knew of the challenges
we faced and was working closely with us to overcome them. In partnership
with the state and with their support, MTC has made significant improvements
at all four facilities and continues to make great strides. Soon after being
awarded the contracts in 2012, Mr. Epps recommended MTC work with Cecil
McCrory to provide services within the state of Mississippi. Mr. Epps also
made us aware of the fee McCrory had charged in the past to other contractors.
MTC hired Mr. McCrory as a consultant because of his many years of experience
working in the state. Mr. McCrory had been working with the previous prison
contractor and other vendors so MTC felt his services would be beneficial
given his knowledge and experience. MTC paid Mr. McCrory $12,000 per month
for his work, after Mr. Epps told us that is what others had been paying him.
MTC hires consultants in every state where we provide services to the state.
Mr. McCrory's services included working with counties to explore possible
business opportunities, coordinating with local and state officials to
strengthen MTC's relationship within the state, and networking at various
industry conferences. He worked at length to investigate a potential bid for
a federal corrections contract in Mississippi. At no time did Mr. Epps
instruct or mandate MTC to hire Mr. McCrory. In light of the indictment, MTC
cancelled its contract with Mr. McCrory last week. Each month, MTC received
an invoice from Mr. McCrory and paid it in full just as we would any other
invoice. MTC was not aware of any alleged inappropriate relationships between
Mr. Epps and Mr. McCrory or that Mr. Epps was allegedly a participant in any
way in the contract with McCrory. We fully support the government's
investigation to learn what happened and to take appropriate action. We also
believe the state of Mississippi made the right decision in reviewing all
current corrections contracts including suspending the procurement process
for the four private prison contracts which we hold. The integrity of
contracting is of paramount importance to the state as well as to MTC. All
MTC employees are required to take ethics training and are held to the
highest standards of ethical conduct. We deeply regret that in this case we
didn't have any idea that improprieties may have taken place, especially in
light of the significant allegations in the indictment.
State Corrections Commissioner
Chris Epps and Rankin County School Board President Cecil McCrory will be
arraigned in federal court today on a 49-count federal indictment. BREAKING:
For Thursday updates to this story as it breaks, click here. Epps has
abruptly resigned amid a federal investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office
has moved to seize his $359,000 Flowood home, his beachfront condo in Pass
Christian and two Mercedes Benz sedans. Epps resigned his $132,700-a-year
government job on Wednesday, with a brief letter to Gov. Phil Bryant. McCrory
also abruptly resigned his school board post on Wednesday. McCrory is listed
as an owner of companies that have done business with the Mississippi
Department of Corrections. Neither Epps nor McCrory responded to calls for
comment on Wednesday. Epps submitted a short resignation letter to Gov. Phil
Bryant on Wednesday, saying, "I am retiring effective immediately today,
Nov. 5, 2014," and thanking Bryant for "the opportunity to serve
under your leadership." Epps also
sent a message to MDOC employees that said: "I am resigning my position
as commissioner effective today, immediately, Nov. 5, 2014, and retiring
after 32.9 years of service. I love this agency, and I love you, the people
who make up this agency. I thank all of you for your support." Bryant
spokesman Knox Graham had little comment on Epps' resignation. "The
governor has accepted Commissioner Epps' resignation ... I don't know
anything beyond that at this point," Graham said. Later, he sent out a
notice that MDOC Deputy Commissioner Richard McCarty will lead the agency as
a search begins for a permanent replacement for Epps. State Auditor Stacey
Pickering said he was aware of Epps' resignation, but, "I cannot make
further comment at this time." House Corrections Chairman Tommy Taylor
said he had received calls Wednesday "saying (Epps) is going to resign
effective today," but had no further details. Taylor said in general,
"You never like to hear about someone serving the public losing their
integrity." Epps, 53, is the longest serving corrections commissioner in
the the state's history, first appointed by then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in
2002. Epps currently serves as president of both the American Correctional
Association and the Association of State Correctional Administrators. Epps
started his career with the Department of Corrections in 1982 as a
correctional officer at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Epps
has been in the news recently, as part of The Clarion-Ledger's month-long
series of stories on widespread problems in the state's correctional system. Nov 7, 2014 PCWG Mississippi
Business Journal
BREAKDOWN MDOC paid: - College Street Leasing, LLC
$1,259,724 between FY09-FY14 - American Transition Services,
LLC $1,369,536 between FY09-FY12 - The GEO Group, Inc. $256,201,713 between FY04-FY12 - Management & Training
Corporation $114,643,308 between FY13-Today - Adminpros, LLC. $2,939,871
between FY09-Today - Wexford Health Sources, Inc.
$294,747,118 between FY06-Today - Branon Medical Group $2,713,499
between FY06-FY13
Conditions have become so terrible
in some private prisons that some have been kicked out. Florida-based GEO got
the boot in Mississippi after a federal judge in 2012 called the Walnut Grove
Correctional Facility "a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts
and conditions." In Idaho, the FBI is investigating the Tennessee-based
Corrections Corporation of America after allegations that records were
falsified to cover up staff shortages at the Idaho Correctional Center, where
gangs ruled and violence was so rampant it was called "Gladiator
School." A lawsuit accused the company of failing to adequately train officers,
turning a blind eye to violence, failing to adequately investigate assaults,
failing to discipline guards and failing to develop measures to prevent
violence. The Utah-based MTC, which operates
four private prisons in Mississippi, has become the latest target of
litigation. The ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center are seeking class-action
certification for a lawsuit against the company for its operation of East
Mississippi Correctional Facility, described in paperwork as a
"barbaric" prison where inmates — most of them mentally ill — are
beaten, exploited and mistreated by gangs and others. Last spring, former
Washington state Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail, an expert for the
plaintiffs, inspected the private prison, found defects in basic security,
including cell doors that wouldn't lock and a lack of staff training.
"This is a prison awash in contraband and easily accessible
weapons," he said. "It is an extraordinarily dangerous
prison." MTC officials said they have only been operating the prison a
little more than two years and have "made significant improvements in
overall safety and security and offender care. It's important to note that
the individual who conducted this report is the plaintiff's witness in a
lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the Mississippi Department
of Corrections." If a federal judge does grant class-action status, the
lawsuit against the private prison operator would follow in the steps of
similar litigation brought against Walnut Grove Correctional Facility and the
State Penitentiary at Parchman's death row and Unit 32. The Unit 32 lawsuit,
brought on behalf of 1,000 prisoners in prolonged solitary confinement,
railed against the horrible conditions there. Margaret Winter, associate
director of the ACLU's National Prison Project, said Corrections Commissioner
Chris Epps agreed to work with them to reduce the use of solitary. "In
fact, the level of violence at Unit 32 plummeted when the Mississippi
Department of Corrections radically reduced the numbers in solitary,"
she said. "The astounding success of this experience enabled
Commissioner Epps to close down Unit 32 a few years later."
Unfortunately, she said, he opened a new solitary unit at East Mississippi
and handed the care of prisoners over "to private corporations operating
for profit — with the disastrous results we see today." Problems have
continued at Walnut Grove, where there were inmate disturbances in December
and July — the last one resulting in injuries to three correctional officers,
including one being stabbed in the back. MTC operates Walnut Grove, East
Mississippi, Marshall County Correctional Facility and the Wilkinson County
Correctional Facility. Issa Arnita, director of communications for MTC, said
they've made great improvements at all the facilities. "And we continue
to look for ways to make it even better," he said. In August, Epps
opened the bidding process for a new $60.8 million contract, desiring more
security officers in the private prisons. MTC, which earns annual revenues
exceeding $525 million, is bidding again on the contract. So is the New
Jersey-based Community Education Centers, which has run jails, but is new to
the prison business. One of the biggest problems at Mississippi's private
prisons — and state prisons as well — is that of contraband. Correctional
officers and inmates say cellphones, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs are
plentiful inside what is supposed to be a smoke-free prison. "If you
wanted some ice (meth), I could walk right out of this cell door and buy you
some ice," a Wilkinson inmate told The Clarion-Ledger. Contraband is so
wide open at Wilkinson that last fall officers found a semi-automatic .25
caliber pistol in the cell of inmate Issac Garner, who had gone to prison for
forging a check. Last month, Garner walked free on parole, never charged for
possessing a firearm as a felon. Epps said MDOC recommended prosecution in
Garner's case, but the district attorney's office told The Clarion-Ledger no
one had ever informed them about Garner having the gun in the Wilkinson
prison. Under Mississippi law, any felon convicted of possession of "any
firearm or any bowie knife, dirk knife, butcher knife, switchblade knife,
metallic knuckles, blackjack, or any muffler or silencer" must be
sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison. State Sen. Gray Tollison,
R-Oxford, who introduced the law, was stunned to find out that Garner had
never been charged, despite being found with a pistol inside the prison
walls. Steve Pickett, chairman of the state Parole Board, said the board was
never told a gun had been found inside Garner's cell at Wilkinson and would
have learned so if a charge had been filed. At this point, Garner is being
electronically monitored, which "is our insurance policy of closer
management," Pickett said. Former Corrections Commissioner Robert L.
Johnson, who co-owns Probation Services Co. of Mississippi, said
privatization aimed at reducing costs, increasing efficiency and improving
services. "Two of those things — efficiency and improvement — got lost while
the private companies were trying to maximize profits, and the government was
exulting over the 'savings,' " he said.
"In other words, nobody is really minding the store." Sonja
Vickers, who worked for the company at the East Mississippi, said pushing
blame onto the private prison companies misses the point. "GEO is not
the problem," she said. "MTC is not the problem. It's some of the
people working at the facility." She said she saw some staff and more
often inmates, "vicious, conniving people preying on defenseless
prisoners, whose only available help was being thwarted by corruption." Contact Jerry Mitchell at firstname.lastname@example.com
or (601) 961-7064. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.Fast facts: Mississippi
paid $59.3 million last year to run four private prisons. Source: MDOC Mississippi's Four Private
Prisons: • East Mississippi Correctional
Facility • Marshall County Correctional Facility • Walnut Grove Correctional
Facility Oct 12, 2014 clarionledger.com Some inmates call this place
"The Killing Field," and on May 25, the institution lived up to its
name when Kendrick Walker was stabbed to death 81 times. "We're living
in a Martin Scorsese movie," one inmate told The Clarion-Ledger.
"We're supposed to be on lockdown, and there are guys walking around
with Samurai swords — 3- or 4-foot long swords." The Clarion-Ledger could
hear banging inside the prison that sounded like a busy construction site — a
sound that continued for some time. Inmates told the newspaper the sound was
metal striking metal as gang members made weapons. Photographs taken by
inmates on cellphones inside the prison show entire walls ripped out to
remove reinforcing steel, which inmates say was used to form such weapons.
After viewing the pictures, former Corrections Commissioner Robert L. Johnson
shook his head at what he saw. "This is incompetency at its worst,"
said Johnson, who opposed private prisons as commissioner. "Honestly, I
think it is symptomatic of the profit motive that drives a lot of the
corrections industry instead of concern for public safety." CCA, which
formerly managed the prison, has annual revenues surpassing $1.7 billion, and
a CEO pulling down more than $3.2 million in salary and benefits. MTC, which
began managing the prison in summer 2013, earns annual revenues exceeding
$525 million. Issa Arnita, MTC's director of communications, said significant
improvements have been made since the company took over. "Our priority
in corrections is the safety and security of our staff, offenders and the
community," he said. "MTC is not driven by profit, but rather by
our mission to help improve the lives of those we serve." In 1998,
community leaders opened this low- to medium-security prison in hopes of
providing jobs to the small town of Woodville and the surrounding area. But
when the State Penitentiary at Parchman shut down its notorious Unit 32 in
2010 because of gang killings, violence and horrible conditions, corrections
officials sent many of those inmates to Wilkinson, which became a
maximum-security institution. With the increase of gang members and leaders came an increase in violence, prompting some inmates to
refer to Wilkinson as "the new Unit 32." Between 2011 and 2013,
when Corrections Corporation of America ran the prison, monthly incident
reports show Wilkinson was more violent than any state prison. At Parchman,
an inmate stands a one in nearly 16 chance of being assaulted. At Wilkinson,
that number is one in seven. On April 19, 2013, members of the Gangster
Disciples and Vice Lords had a confrontation in Wilkinson, and officials put
the prison in lockdown. The next day, after being warned the gangs would
fight again, officials kept inmates locked down in some pods and released
others, records show. Freed from their cells, members of the Vice Lords
swarmed other inmates, including Demond Flowers, stabbing him in the heart.
The Flowers' family settled its lawsuit against CCA for an undisclosed
amount. In the face of burgeoning problems, Corrections Commissioner Chris
Epps awarded management of Wilkinson in July 2013 to MTC. "The
Mississippi Department of Corrections is looking forward to a great
partnership with MTC," Epps said. "There is a need for different
types of prisons, including state and regional as well as private facilities
in Mississippi. MTC will be held to the same high standards as set by MDOC,
and I feel extremely confident that MTC will do a great job." Despite
the change in management, the violence continued. Last May, 33-year-old
Kendrick Walker, nicknamed "Mud Cat," was just a year from being
released from prison for a 10-year sentence for drug possession and possession
of a firearm. According to an investigative report, animosity existed between
other inmates in Wilkinson's F pod and Walker, who was affiliated with the
Bloods gang. He would get correctional officers to give him an extra food
tray, leaving one inmate temporarily without, the report says. As a result of
the food shortage, members of the Gangster Disciples, along with allies from
the Simon City Royals, decided to attack Walker, the report says. The
Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of the video showing what happened. At
12:20 p.m., Walker was sitting at a table while inmates hovered on the
periphery. One inmate, identified as Kerwin "Schoolboy" Franklin,
broke off a broom handle and used it to stab Walker in the back as he and
other inmates attacked Walker. When a fellow Blood gang member, Adrian
Williams, came to Walker's aid, he was attacked. After he was stabbed down,
gang members turned their attention to Walker, who climbed to the top of the
showers. Jumping from there to the top tier, he ran and locked himself in an
unoccupied cell at about 12:22 p.m. A standoff began. Gang members could do
nothing because the cell door was locked. They were on one side, and Walker
was on the other. At 12:24 p.m., inmate Mike Powell walked over to the tower
and appeared to communicate with an officer. Three minutes later, inmates
took Walker's jean jacket and set it on fire. Another group of inmates
rendered aid to Williams and apparently tried to get officers to open the
door so they could get him help. The door remained closed. At 12:30 p.m.,
Powell sat on a table in front of the tower officer. A minute later, after
checking on Williams, he banged on the tower window, pointing to the cell
where Walker had locked himself inside. Powell walked over to the top of the
shower and used the wall to sharpen his homemade knife. He then shook hands
with an inmate aiding Williams. At 12:32 p.m., Powell sat down again at the
table, this time facing the tower. After a few moments, he pointed inside the
tower, appearing to signal an officer inside. He got off the table, walked to
the tower and pointed at the cell where Walker was. Then he pointed at the
injured Williams on the floor. The conversation between him and the officer
lasted for 17 seconds. He then walked to the corner of the pod, where he
spoke with another inmate. After walking slowly toward the stairs, he began
to run toward the cell, where Walker had locked himself inside. Inmates told
investigators they heard the metallic buzz of the tower officer unlocking the
cell door. When Walker tried to charge out, Powell and other inmates swarmed
and stabbed him. When Walker went over the stair rail, Powell went with him.
Walker ran to the nearby shower, where Powell and other inmates stabbed him,
beat him, kicked him and smashed him with a microwave. Walker crumpled in a
heap underneath the stairs, and his attackers walked away, seemingly
satisfied. But when Powell saw the inmate still moving, he went over and
stomped Walker. The deed done, another inmate came over and urinated on him.
It would take another 11 minutes before Maj. Gabriel Walker, chief of
security, entered the pod at 12:47 p.m. with the response team commander. By
that time, inmates had already cleaned up much of the crime scene, disposing
of bloody clothes, towels and knives used in the fight, the video showed. The
major ordered inmates back to their cells, but Powell ignored the order and
continued to shower off the blood. He wound up throwing away his bloody
clothes, talked to another inmate and received a fresh set of clothes and
exited the zone "unescorted and unrestrained," the report says.
Powell went into the dead inmate's cell and took his mattress back to his
cell, he told investigators. The major tried to handcuff Powell from behind —
only to have Powell jerk his hand away, the report says. The major finally
handcuffed the inmate in front, but never searched him. After the major left,
inmates came back out of their cells and continued to clean up blood from the
crime scene. Officers finally removed the body of Kendrick Walker at 1:28
p.m. — 41 minutes after they first entered. The major, who was read his
Miranda rights, told investigators that when he checked on Kendrick Walker he
had no pulse and didn't appear to be breathing. He said he is not medically
trained, but "Inmate Walker appeared to be deceased when he first
arrived," the report says. The video showed the major spending five
seconds with Kendrick Walker before walking away. No attempt at medical
assistance ever took place. "Investigators questioned Major Walker
regarding the amount of time it took to remove Inmate Walker from the
pod," the report says. "He advised it took long because he was
called to the B Pod because … he thought another riot was about to
ensue." The major deemed it a crime scene, the report says. "He
stated he is not sure of the protocol for responding to a homicide, but he
stated he believed he was not supposed to move the body." Corrections
policy calls for officers to respond to emergencies in four minutes. They
responded 27 minutes after the fight began. One inmate identified the tower
officer who opened the locked cell door, telling investigators she
"works with the Gangsters." After being read her Miranda rights,
she denied popping the lock, but she admitted an inmate had paid her $1,200
to smuggle him tobacco, rolling papers and cigars. She was fired but never
prosecuted. When investigators later tried to have her take a lie detector
test, they discovered she was pregnant and never questioned her. When
investigators tried to give a lie detector test to another tower officer, the
polygraph examiner deemed her "psychologically unfit." A third
tower officer told investigators that inmates had used a rope and bed sheet
to open the cell door — something no inmate mentioned. She was fired for
employee misconduct and aiding in bringing in contraband. In the end, none of
the tower officers was given a lie detector test, and investigators concluded
allegations of a tower officer popping the lock "cannot be
sustained." The time of death listed on the report? 12:20 p.m., which is
when the attack of Kendrick Walker actually began. In February, a grand jury
is expected to consider murder charges against Powell and four other inmates.
Mississippi corrections officials told The Clarion-Ledger that no officer has
ever been prosecuted for opening a door that enabled attacks or killings of
inmates. Asked why not, Epps replied his department "refers any case for
prosecution where the credible evidence reveals a crime has been committed."
Matt Steffey, professor at Mississippi College School of Law, said if law
enforcement or even the Justice Department discovers a potential conflict,
they bring in an outside agency to investigate. In this case, he said, the
Department of Corrections "has such a significant conflict of interest
an outside or independent investigation is necessary." Sentencing to
prison, former Corrections Commissioner Johnson said, "shouldn't be a
death sentence because of dangerous conditions within the walls of our prison."
Arnita said MTC has "consistently addressed the number of assaults by
investigating each and taking corrective action. We've also introduced new
programming and recreational activities, which historically reduce
offender-on-offender assaults and other incidence of violence." Inside
Wilkinson, gang membership makes up 86 percent of the prison population.
Since MTC took over management of Wilkinson, "we've hired a security
threat group lieutenant to gather intelligence and manage these offenders,"
Arnita said. "This lieutenant, along with other resources, has made good
progress in strategically placing inmates in housing arrangements that reduce
risk of violence." While housing gang members "comes with serious
challenges," he said, "MTC has made great strides in making this
facility safe, secure and more conducive to programming that can help many
offenders make a successful transition back to society." Jackson lawyer
Chuck Mullins, who represented the Flowers' family in their lawsuit, said
gangs are running Wilkinson and other prisons, and Mississippi corrections
officials "have pretty much said they can't do anything about it.
They've given up." Epps disagreed that gangs are powerful in Mississippi
prisons, saying in an emailed response to questions that his department
"doesn't recognize 'gangs.' These inmates are identified as Security
Threat Groups. The inmates are classified appropriately, following the
national trend of correctional practitioners."Under contract, Wilkinson
prison officials must make every effort to hire locally first. The number of
people to pick from in Woodville is 1,026. "Where are you going to find
local qualified people?" Mullins asked. One day, he said, "they're
working as a checkout clerk, the next, they're looking over gangs." Oct 5, 2014 clarionledger.com A federal judge in 2012 called the
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility "a cesspool of unconstitutional and
inhuman acts and conditions." Before the next year ended, the prison
scored a perfect 100 from the American Corrections Association. "I am
extremely proud to have this private facility achieve a perfect score under
new management," Epps said on Nov. 22, 2013. "Achieving 100 percent
in both categories of standards is very difficult. This validates the
professionalism and care that Management & Training Corp. has brought to
Walnut Grove." He remains president of the organization that awarded the
100 score, ACA. Jody Owens, managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law
Center's Mississippi office, had praise for the work Epps did heading a task
force that brought reforms state officials are hoping will save the state
$266 million in prison expenses. "It's one of Epps' more significant
contributions," said Owens, who served on the task force. "It
recognizes the state has been wrong in sentencing and rehabilitation."
But he questioned the perfect score given Walnut Grove and others. "It's
kind of sad what Epps has done, but it just shows you the rubber-stamping
process." The violence and other problems in the prisons are "being
overlooked when these grades are passed out," he said. "It makes
you question the integrity of the process." Corrections officer Berl
Goff, who was brought in to help clean up the private prison, said he was
stunned to learn the facility had received a 93 in 2009 from the ACA. A
Justice Department probe concluded some staff had sex with minors who were
inmates, brutally beat youths and turned a blind eye to inmates possessing
shanks. "Explain to me how a federal investigation from 2009 and 2010
showed it to be the most egregious prison," yet ACA, headed by Epps,
gave the facility a 93, he said. "There's no conflict of interest?"
Goff asked. "C'mon." The Clarion-Ledger asked Epps for an
interview, but, in a rare response from him, he turned down that request,
insisting instead the newspaper submit all questions in writing. In his
written response, Epps denied conflict, saying the ACA is a peer-review
procedure. "Experts from other states conduct the audits," he said.
"MDOC was already attaining 100 percent scores in years prior to me
becoming ACA president in 2013." He's right. In May 2003, ACA gave the
State Penitentiary at Parchman a perfect 100, and the state relied on that
accreditation as proof conditions didn't violate the Eighth Amendment. Before
the month ended, a federal judge rejected that claim, concluding conditions
inside the prison's Unit 32 were horrific and that ACA accreditation did not
prove conditions were constitutional. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
agreed. "ACA accreditors reviewed Parchman's written policies, but not
their actual practices," said Margaret Winter, associate director of the
ACLU National Prison Project. These days, Epps is riding high in the
corrections world. The same man who started in 1982 as a correctional officer
at Parchman's Unit 29 to augment his pay as a Delta teacher is now president
of the ACA and the Association of State Correctional Administrators — the
first person to simultaneously head both. Just three years ago, he won the
award as the Outstanding Corrections Commissioner in the Nation, awarded by
the ASCA. He has even talked of running for political office. "Part of
my motivation for my career is to be of service to my state and my fellow man
as well as my God," he said in a 2009 radio interview. "I think
that the calling to elected office, for the right purposes, is one of the
highest callings a person can have." Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove said
Mississippi is fortunate to have someone who understands the system of
corrections like Epps does. "Fourteen years ago when I appointed Chris
to be the head of the Department of Corrections, we had no doubt he would
make a great commissioner. Time has proven all of us to be correct."
André de Gruy, director of the Capital Defense Counsel in Jackson, praised
Epps after serving with him this year on the task force aimed at reducing the
prison population. The newly enacted law gives judges more flexibility to
impose alternative sentences, including ordering treatment for drug users.
More than three-fourths of prisoners are addicted. But Epps faces challenges
in the year to come. He has had to repeatedly return to lawmakers for
millions more to cover budget deficits because of increasing numbers of
inmates. But with that population falling from 22,008 in January to 19,972
last month, lawmakers may be less inclined to cover any budget deficit. House
Corrections Committee Chairman Tommy Taylor has experience in corrections.
For more than a decade, he worked as the warden of the Bolivar County
Regional Correctional Facility. Asked what he thought about Epps' service
heading the agency, he replied that he believes the Department of Corrections
"has the capability of being the number one correctional agency in the
state. You have some very dedicated employees there." Regardless of whether
something goes right or wrong, he said, "it all falls back on the leader
of the organization." And lately, there's been more wrong than right. On
April 4, 2013, court monitors at Walnut Grove prison reported that
"assaults involving weapons continue to occur at alarming levels"
and that assaults needed to be reduced by at least half to constitute
"reasonably safe living conditions." On Nov. 4, 2013 — weeks before
Walnut Grove scored 100 — monitors found the prison was in partial compliance
with both the "reasonably safe living conditions" and
"sufficient numbers of adequately trained staff." Forty days after
Epps gushed over the perfect score, three pods at Walnut Grove exploded with
violence on New Year's Eve, and at least 16 inmates were treated at the
hospital for injuries. On Aug. 6, attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law
Center and ACLU representing inmates at the prison told a federal court that
changes are needed now to prevent the "ongoing, substantial risk of
serious injury — including death — from the extraordinarily dangerous
conditions at Walnut Grove." In documents, they described "a major
escalation in inmate-on-inmate violence over the past several months at the
Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, and in the last seven months alone
there have been two riots during which the Mississippi Department of
Corrections lost control of the facility and 25 inmates were seriously
wounded." Celeste McDonald, vice president for MTC's corporate
communications, disagreed with the attorneys' assessment. She said the staff
responded immediately to the New Year's Eve violence and that the incident
was under control in an hour. "In July, an incident occurred in one of
the housing units where nine offenders were injured, taken to the hospital
and released," she said. "No inmates in either incident were
seriously wounded. Since (the) July 10 incident, there has only been one
offender on offender assault at the Walnut Grove facility." Court
monitors said despite injuries to 16 inmates that included "wounds, lacerations
and fractures," MTC recorded the New Year's Eve riot as "a single
fight/assault. Even with that exception, the rate (of violence) has increased
since June 2013." As a result of the riot, seven officers were either
fired or resigned. The reasons, according to monitors: "Passing
contraband to inmates, refusing a vehicle search, failure to report known
violations, fraternization (with inmates) and drug possession." And on
Sept. 25, the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit against
East Mississippi Correctional Facility, charging that conditions at the
private prison, where 70 percent of the inmates are mentally ill, are
"barbaric." June 14, 2012 Huffington
Post June 7, 2012 WTOK June 7, 2012 AP April 20, 2012 WTOK April 20, 2012 AP May 5, 2011 Clarion
Ledger December 2, 2008 Clarion
Ledger November 23, 2008 Clarion
Ledger January 14, 2008 Clarion
Ledger June 22, 2005 Associated
Press Mississippi Legislature May 7, 2006 Clarion
Ledger February 11, 2006 Picayune
Item May 26, 2005 Biloxi Sun
Herald December 23, 2004 Clarion
Ledger October 7, 2002 August 24, 2002 August
2, 2002 July
23, 2002 July 9, 2002 July
7, 2002 July 3, 2002 July
2, 2002 June
24, 2002 June 23, 2002 May 20, 2002 April 10, 2002 February 21, 2002 September 14, 2001 June 27, 2001 June 22, 2001 June 15, 2001 June 12, 2001 April 5, 2001 March 30, 2001 March 27
, 2001 Mississippi Welcome Center,
I-10 Natchez-Adams County,
Mississippi March 2, 2007 The
Natchez Democrat Oxford,
Mississippi October 28, 2004 Daily
Mississippian October 26, 2004 Daily
Mississippian October 25, 2004 Daily
Mississippian Pike County, Mississippi January 2, 2007 Clarion
Ledger December 22, 2006 AP December 18, 2006 Enterprise-Journal December 18, 2006 AP December 4, 2006 AP July 19, 2002 June 6, 2002 May 7, 2002 Tallahatchie
Correctional Facility Prison operator accused of denying
workers overtime pay Clay Chandler, The Clarion-Ledger
10:10 p.m. CST November 7, 2014 A private prison operator whose
contract with the Mississippi Department of Corrections is under review as
part of the investigation into former commissioner Chris Epps faces
allegations of denying workers overtime pay. James Walker, a shift supervisor
at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, is suing
Corrections Corp. of America in Mississippi's Northern District federal
court. CCA operates TCCF in Tutwiler and Adams County Correctional Facility
in Natchez. Walker's complaint, filed last month, says workers often have to
arrive as much as 30 minutes before shifts start to prepare and complete
reports, sign post orders, pass through safety scanners and obtain safety
equipment like handcuffs and pepper spray. Employees cannot leave their post,
even if the shift has ended, until a replacement arrives, the complaint says.
CCA has classified shift supervisors and assistant supervisors in Tutwiler
and Natchez as management, which exempts them from overtime pay. The
complaint says that exemption does not grant employees managerial duties, but
forces them to work beyond 80 hours in a two-week period with no extra
compensation. "In most cases, they do the exact
same work as other guards at the facility, except they hold the title Shift
Supervisor of Assistant Shift Supervisor," reads the complaint, which
represents one side of a legal argument. The suit also accuses CCA not
providing regularly scheduled meal and rest breaks, as required by labor law.
The suit seeks unpaid back wages and an injunction requiring CCA to provide
meal and rest periods and eliminating the exemption from overtime
requirements. Although the suit was brought by only one employee, it asks for
collective status, which is similar to class action. If presiding
Judge Sharion Aycock grants it, all TCCF and ACCF employees would have the
option of becoming a plaintiff. "While we cannot speak to the specific
allegations in the complaint, CCA is committed to ensuring all employees are
fairly compensated for the services they provide in accordance with all
applicable laws," CCA spokesman Steven Owen wrote in an email to The
Clarion-Ledger. CCA's contract with MDOC was not named in the indictments
that charged Epps and former Rankin County School Board President Cecil
McCrory with 49 counts of money laundering, bribery, wire fraud and
conspiracy. Epps is accused of receiving kickbacks from McCrory in exchange
for steering state contracts to companies McCrory either owned or had a
financial interest in. Prosecutors allege Epps received almost $1 million
that he laundered through his home mortgage, a beachfront condo on the Coast
and investment accounts. Epps, in return, allegedly steered nearly $1 billion
in state contracts in companies tied to McCrory. The two men were arraigned
Thursday in federal court in Jackson. Each is free on a $25,000 bond. Gov.
Phil Bryant has ordered MDOC to rebid the contracts listed in the indictment
and review all others. CCA was not among the businesses linked to McCrory and
was not listed in the indictment. The private prison operator's recent
history in Mississippi has been difficult. Delta Correctional Facility in
Greenwood closed in 2012. CCA closed the 1,172-bed facility because it could
not match or exceed cost savings state operation would have brought. State
law says private prison operators have to manage facilities cheaper than the
state could. In 2012, a riot at ACCF resulted in one guard's death and
several others being held hostage. Two inmates involved in that incident
pleaded guilty to conspiracy earlier this year. CCA operates facilities in 20
states and employs more than 14,000 corrections professionals nationwide. October 28, 2009 Clarksdale
Press Register October 22, 2009 AP May 23, 2008 Sacramento
Bee May 13, 2008 Sacramento
Bee August 18, 2007 Sacramento
Bee July 22, 2007 Honolulu
Advertiser July 18, 2007 Honolulu
Advertiser April 6, 2007 Honolulu
Advertiser May 10, 2006 WAPT April 2, 2006 Honolulu
Advertiser March 12 2006 AP December 26, 2005 Honolulu
Advertiser October 3, 2005 Honolulu
Advertiser August 23, 2005 Honolulu
Advertiser July 28, 2005 Honolulu
Advertiser July 27, 2005
Honolulu Advertiser June 3, 2005 Pueblo
Chieftain February 5,
2005 Honolulu Advertiser Officials at the
Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility have promised to keep residents
better informed about disturbances at the prison in the wake of last month's
uprising by Colorado inmates. Residents near the prison complained they
weren't told about what was happening at the jail during the July 21 riot
when prisoners torched mattresses, clothing and a portable toilet. (Sun
Herald, August 13, 2004) August 2, 2004 Troubles seem
to keep mounting this month for the nation's largest operator of private
prisons. Corrections Corporation of America suffered through two prison riots
this week - one in Colorado and another in Mississippi. The uprisings follow
a July 7 homicide at a Nashville facility, which is still being investigated,
and a smaller uprising in Oklahoma. The spate of bad news is providing
fodder for critics of privately run prisons and prompting a slight drop in
CCA's stock price. In the prison industry, no news is often good news.
"I think the idea of privately operated prisons is one that is still
controversial," said Richard Crane, a consultant in the industry and
former CCA attorney. "(Bad incidents) give those who are opposed to
privatization something to beat their drum about." Critics said
the string of problems shows that privately run prisons are a bad idea, and
that grouping prisoners from multiple states under the care of low-paid,
often inexperienced guards will lead to trouble. "Almost half of
the employees in the facility have no experience whatsoever," said Ken
Kopczynski, with the Private Corrections Institute Inc., an advocacy group opposing
private prisons. "I just hope enough people will wake up to the bad idea
of private prisons. It just goes against all the principles of
democracy." (Henry Herald, July 23, 2004) About 28 inmates from
Colorado caused an uprising Wednesday evening at the Tallahatchie County
Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, officials said. The prisoners
involved were recently shipped to the Mississippi facility to rid Colorado's
crowded prisons of unruly inmates. The disturbance occurred during the
prisoners' recreation break about 6:20 p.m. and lasted about 30 minutes, said
Louise Chickering, spokeswoman for the Corrections Corporations of
America. (Clarion Ledger, July 22, 2004) January 7, 2004 September 15, 2003 Tutwiler Prison for Women May 6, 2005 Birmingham
News May 5, 2005 Birmingham
News April 26, 2005 Mobile
Register April 24, 2005 Birmingham
News April 21, 2005 Tuscaloosa
News Walnut Grove
Correctional Facility
Two inmates stabbed at MTC-run
Walnut Grove prison Two inmates were hospitalized
after being stabbed at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in two separate
incidents on Wednesday. Officers are still investigating the cause of the
first incident, though the inmate has been returned from the hospital to the
prison. The second stabbing occurred around 4:30 p.m. in a separate housing
unit and involved "a small number of offenders," a press release
stated. The inmate, who was stabbed in the back and in the head, is still in
the hospital. His condition is not known, though the release stated the
injuries were not life threatening. MTC, the Utah-based company that operates
Walnut Grove along with three other prisons in the state, has become the
latest private prison operator to come under scrutiny. The ACLU and Southern
Poverty Law Center are seeking class-action certification for a lawsuit against
East Mississippi Correctional Facility, which MTC operates. The facility is
described in paperwork as "barbaric." The lawsuit claims the
inmates, most of whom are mentally ill, are beaten, exploited and mistreated.
In July, an inmate disturbance in an area housing close custody inmates
resulted in injuries to three correctional officers at Walnut Grove,
including one being stabbed in the back. In September, close custody inmates
were transferred from the facility. "It's concerning to us that close
custody inmates are gone but violence still persists at Walnut Grove,"
Jennie Eichelberger of the Southern Poverty Law Center said. MTC also
operates the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, the
Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs and the Wilkinson
County Correctional Facility in Woodville.
JACKSON — All nine inmates injured
during a disturbance on July 10 at Walnut Grove Correctional Facility are now
back in prison. The Mississippi Department of
Corrections reports the three offenders who had remained hospitalized
following the disturbance were released from the University of Mississippi
Medical Center this week. The Leake County prison has been on lockdown since
fighting broke out in one of the housing units. Investigations by the
Mississippi Department of Corrections and Management and Training Corp.
(MTC), the prison's private operator, continue. According to a MDOC press
release, the fighting occurred between two rival gangs in connection with an
attempt to smuggle contraband into the prison. Walnut Grove police arrested
Marcus Warnsley on charges of trespassing and attempting to introduce
contraband into a correctional facility, and the
contraband was seized. Four correctional officers suspected of involvement
have been suspended. "Our investigation is progressing, but we still
have more work to do," said Christopher B. Epps, department of
corrections commissioner. "No charges have been filed against anyone at
this time."
JACKSON, Mississippi — Mississippi
corrections officials say four guards have been suspended from the Walnut
Grove Correctional Facility in the aftermath of a fight among inmates at the
prison. Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps provided an update on the
investigation during a federal court hearing. Nine inmates were hurt last
week in a fight that authorities suggest came after the arrest of a man
trying to smuggle contraband into the prison. Epps says the investigation
determined one guard was to escort an inmate into the prison yard to collect
items that were to be tossed over the fence. A Dec. 31 fight between two
gangs left 16 inmates hurt at the central Mississippi prison. Epps told U.S.
District Judge Carlton Reeves that both incidents were gang-related.
WALNUT GROVE, Mississippi — A
fight that injured nine inmates at a privately run prison in central
Mississippi was related to an attempt to bring in banned items, state
Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Friday. Epps said in a statement
that the Walnut Grove Police Department arrested one person on contraband
charges. A Walnut Grove officer said he didn't know who was arrested. Inmates
suffered cuts and stab wounds during a fight that broke out about 10 p.m.
Thursday among a group of inmates in one of the six housing units, said
spokesman Issa Arnita of Utah-based Management & Training Corp., which
runs the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility through a state contract. Epps
said of the injured inmates, six had been returned to the prison by Friday
afternoon and three remain hospitalized at the University of Mississippi
Medical Center in Jackson. Epps said he made a trip on Friday to the prison,
which remained on lockdown. "Fortunately no one was killed," he
said. Arnita said the prison's emergency response team used "chemical
agents," and the fight was over after about an hour. He said seven
inmates were brought by ambulance to a local hospital. Three were then airlifted
to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Arnita said the
unit where the fight took place houses 240 inmates, and authorities are
trying to determine how many prisoners were involved. Groups suing over
prisoner treatment in Mississippi have criticized the state's hands-off
management of MTC, Mississippi's main private prison contractor. Walnut Grove
has a history of troubles. Most recently, a Dec. 31 fight between two gangs
of prisoners injured 16 inmates. Six prison guards and one supervisor were
fired or resigned after the December fight, court papers said. Another staff
member was placed on administrative leave. Epps said that since then, the
state and MTC have been trying to eliminate contraband such as homemade
knives, cellphones and tobacco, and has started a K-9 unit. "With the
security changes we have made, we are hoping to reduce the incidents at
Walnut Grove," he said in the Friday statement. But court monitors have
questioned whether some of those measures will work, noting that contraband
appears to mainly be brought in by prison employees. An April report by a
monitor for plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit reported high levels of violence,
drugs smuggled in and inadequately trained guards. MTC, which took over
operation of the prison in 2012, disputed most of the findings. MTC said the
prison "has made great progress in creating a safer environment for
offenders and staff." The company said staff meets state training
standards. The state removed juvenile offenders from Walnut Grove after U.S.
District Judge Carlton Reeves described conditions as "a cesspool of
unconstitutional and inhuman acts" while it was being managed by
Florida-based GEO Group. Reeves' order came after a Justice Department report
charged the state was "deliberately indifferent" to sexual abuse,
overuse of force and inadequate medical care for young inmates. MTC also
operates the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, the
Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs and the Wilkinson
County Correctional Facility in Woodville. Jul 11, 2014 wtva.com WALNUT GROVE, Miss. (AP) — Nine
inmates suffered cuts and stab wounds during a fight at a privately run
prison in central Mississippi, and the facility was on lockdown Friday,
officials said. A fight broke out about 10 p.m. Thursday among a group of
inmates in one of the six housing units, said spokesman Issa Arnita of
Management and Training Corporation, which runs the Walnut Grove Correctional
Facility through a state contract. "Officers attempted to stop the
disturbance, but it quickly escalated," he said. "The facility's
emergency response team was activated. The team used chemical agents to gain
control of the inmates. The incident lasted one hour. The local police and
sheriff's departments were on site as a backup." Arnita said the prison
was on lockdown Friday. "We're trying to determine how many offenders
were actually involved the incident. The unit where the disturbance took
place houses 240 inmates," he said. Nine inmates were injured. Arnita
said seven were transported by ambulance to the local hospital. Three were
then airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
One inmate has since been returned to the prison. "We don't have details
on their conditions, and no names are being released at this time. No
correctional officers were injured," he said. The prison, the
Mississippi Department of Corrections and local authorities are investigating
the fight. The Walnut Grove prison has a history of troubles. In April, a
federal prison monitor reported violence was out of control, drugs were being
smuggled in and guards are not adequately trained. The documents were filed
by monitors who oversee the prison and plaintiffs who sued over conditions
there. MTC, who took over operation of the prison in 2012, disputed most of
the findings. MTC said the prison "has made great progress in creating a
safer environment for offenders and staff." A Dec. 31 fight between two gangs left 16 inmates hurt and showed more improvements
were needed, the monitor said. An MTC report said the fight went on for about
an hour, with inmates using homemade knives and other weapons. Six prison
guards and one supervisor were fired or resigned after he December fight,
court papers said. Another staff member was placed on administrative leave.
The monitor's report said, among other findings, that contraband was being
smuggled into the prison and security personnel were ignoring rules
violations and fraternizing with prisoners. The prison is under legal
scrutiny because of earlier misdeeds. The state removed youth offenders from
Walnut Grove after U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves described conditions as "a
cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts" while it was being
managed by Florida-based GEO Group. Reeves' order came after a Justice
Department report charged the state was "deliberately indifferent"
to sexual abuse, overuse of force and inadequate medical care for young
inmates. The state agreed to improve conditions. GEO Group gave up its contract
and the Department of Corrections hired MTC to house adult inmates at Walnut
Grove. Since then, all parties agree conditions have improved. The court
monitors said half the security staff in December had less than one year's
experience. Vail said the staff doesn't have "the necessary skill,
experience, and custody expertise" to manage high-risk inmates and
called on the state to limit the prison to medium- and minimum-security
inmates. MTC, though, said staff meets state training standards. Utah-based
MTC operates the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, the
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility in Walnut Grove, the Marshall County
Correctional Facility in Holly Springs and the Wilkinson County Correctional
Facility in Woodville. Jan 3, 2014 seattlepi.com WALNUT GROVE, Miss. (AP) —
Fourteen of 18 inmates injured during a fight Tuesday have returned to the
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility. Issa Arnita, corporate communications
director for Management and Training Corporation, says an investigation by
the company and the Mississippi Department of Corrections continues. Four
people remain hospitalized at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in
Jackson. Arnita says the altercation took place in one of the facility's six
housing units. He says a correctional officer was treated for minor injuries.
No other officers were injured. Staff responded immediately and secured the
units soon after the incident began around 7:00 p.m. Tuesday. The facility
remains on lock down. Investigators will review video footage of the
incident. Walnut Grove opened in 2001 and can house 1,461 inmates. Mississippi, MTC incident, Walnut Grove Correctional Facility Jan. 1, 2014 clarionledger.com "At approximately 7 p.m. on Dec.
31, 2013, officers at the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility responded to a
fight involving several offenders in one of the housing units. The incident
appears to be gang related. Some of the injured were transported to local
hospitals and later returned to the facility. One correctional officer did
sustain minor injuries. The facility is on lock down. The incident is still
under investigation. We're working in partnership with the Mississippi
Department of Corrections to determine what led up to the incident." The
statement was released by Issa Arnita, corporate communications director for
MTC. Updated 12:18 p.m: "This is the worst thing a parent can live
through," said Leeann Squires of Florence, whose son is at Walnut Grove.
Updated 11:24 a.m: University of Mississippi Medical Center spokesman Jack
Mazurak confirmed that two patients had been brought in by AirCare from
Walnut Grove, and two had come in by ground ambulance. Original story:
Mississippi Department of Corrections officials are confirming an incident at
Walnut Grove Correctional Facility last night that sources say sent more than
10 people to the hospital. "The MDOC Corrections Investigation Division
is investigating the matter," said MDOC spokesperson Tara Booth.
"We can confirm there was an incident and our investigators are on the
scene as we speak." Details on the incident are scarce, but a responder
not authorized to discuss the situation said possibly 13 people may have been
hospitalized, many with stab wounds. Stephanie Luckett of Canton said her
mother-in-law got a text message that a riot had occurred, and she had called
Walnut Grove to check on a loved one in the facility. She called at the same
time The Clarion-Ledger was calling the facility and operators somehow
connected her with The Clarion-Ledger instead of connecting either caller
with Walnut Grove officials. Officials at MTC, Walnut Grove's corporation,
have not responded yet to phone calls and emails. The Leake County Sheriff's
Department and Walnut Grove Police Department both assisted at the scene, but
neither had anyone available to comment. Booth said investigators will look
at video footage to find out more about the incident. Walnut Grove is located
in Leake County, approximately 11 miles southeast of Carthage. WGCF has a
housing capacity of 1,461.
In the four privately run prisons
holding Mississippi inmates last year, the assault rate was three times
higher on average than in state-run lockups. None was as violent as the
Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. The for-profit detention center,
surrounded by razor wire and near the forests and farms of central
Mississippi, had 27 assaults per 100 offenders last year, more than any other
prison in the state, according to an April court filing. Staff shortages,
mismanagement and lax oversight had long turned it into a cauldron of
violence, where female employees had sex with inmates, pitted them against
each other, gave them weapons and joined their
gangs, according to court records, interviews and a U.S. Justice Department
report. More than 130,000 state and federal convicts throughout the U.S. -- 8
percent of the total -- now live in private prisons such as Walnut Grove, as
public officials buy into claims that the institutions can deliver profits
while preparing inmates for life after release, saving tax dollars and
creating jobs."It was like a jungle," said Craig Kincaid, 24, a former
inmate. "It was an awful place to go when you're trying to get your life
together." No national data tracks whether the facilities are run as well as
public ones, and private-prison lobbyists for years have successfully fought
efforts to bring them under federal open-records law. Yet regulatory, court
and state records show that the industry has repeatedly experienced the kind
of staffing shortages and worker turnover that helped produce years of chaos
at Walnut Grove. Saving Money: "There is a systematic failure to provide the
level and competency of staffing necessary to run facilities that are safe
not only for the people on the inside, but the public," said Elaine Rizzo, a
criminal-justice professor at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New
Hampshire, who studied prison privatization for a state advisory board. "It
comes back to saving money." In Texas and Florida, which hold about a third
of all privately detained state inmates, employee turnover rates were 50
percent to more than 100 percent higher in private prisons than in public
ones, according to data from the Texas Criminal Justice Department and the
Florida Law Enforcement Department. In Mississippi, Tennessee and Idaho,
company-run prisons have had higher assault rates than public ones, state
data show. Geo's Response: Boca Raton, Florida-based Geo (GEO) Group Inc.,
the second-largest U.S. prison company, ran the Walnut Grove prison for about
two years, from August 2010 until July 2012. Pablo Paez, a spokesman for Geo,
said focusing on troubled institutions such as Walnut Grove "yields an
unfair, unbalanced, and inaccurate portrayal of the totality of our industry's
and our company's long standing record of quality operations and services
which have delivered significant savings for taxpayers." The Mississippi
prison "faced significant operational challenges for several years" before
Geo took over, and the company invested "significant resources, time, and
effort" to improve conditions at the facility, Paez said by e-mail. The
for-profit prison industry has encountered staffing issues in other states.
Idaho Corrections Department officials voted last month not to renew a
contract with Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America,
the largest U.S. prison company, after it admitted billing for hours that
weren't worked. Dangerous Situation: State and federal officials have
reported dangerous conditions at understaffed privately run prisons in Ohio,
Colorado and in Mississippi. New Mexico fined Geo $2.4 million in 2012 for
excessive staff vacancies at three prisons in 2011 and 2012, according to Jim
Brewster, general counsel for the state corrections department. The U.S.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration last year sought $104,000 in
penalties against Geo, including $70,000 for worker shortages, faulty cells
and inadequate training at a prison in Meridian, Mississippi, that the agency
said put workers at risk of being attacked. Geo is contesting the matter. In
May, inmates at the prison, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union,
sued the state in U.S. District Court in Jackson alleging "barbaric and
horrific conditions" at the facility, now run by a different company. A 2004
report by the Colorado Corrections Department blamed a riot at a Corrections
Corp. prison on chronic understaffing and high employee turnover: The
attrition rate was double that of state-run facilities. Inexperience and lack
of staff cohesion isn't lost on rioting inmates, according to the report.
Public Difference: In Colorado's public prisons, "offenders know that
attempts to defeat security" will be met by "a confident and experienced
staff," according to the report. "No corrections system -- public or private
-- is immune to incidents," Steven Owen, a Corrections Corp. spokesman, said
by e-mail. "In Colorado, our dedicated, professional employees are required
to meet or exceed the same training requirements as their public
counterparts." The private corrections industry has delivered for investors.
The number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44
percent in the past decade. BlackRock Inc. (BLK) and Renaissance Technologies
LLC are among dozens of money-management firms that have invested in the
business. As of March 31, BlackRock reported holding stakes worth more than
$254 million in Geo and $236 million in Corrections Corp. (CXW), while
Renaissance disclosed owning about $39 million of Geo shares and about $36
million in Corrections Corp. stock, according to datacompiled by Bloomberg.
Geo has more than doubled since December 2011, while Corrections Corp. has
risen 87 percent, both outpacing a 33 percent gain for the Standard &
Poor's 500 Index. Representatives of BlackRock and Renaissance declined to
comment. Low Pay: Pay and staffing ratios are lower in private prisons than
in public ones, state and federal data show. The median annual pay in
company-run facilities was $30,460 in 2010, according to the U.S. Labor
Department, 21 percent less than for correctional officers employed by
states. In Texas, wages and benefits are "generally lower" in private prisons
than in public ones, according to a 2008 legislative report. Nationally,
private prisons had one corrections officer for every 6.9 inmates in 2005,
compared with one for every five in public lockups, according to the Justice
Department's most recent statistics. Geo took over Walnut Grove after it
acquired Houston-based Cornell Cos. Under its new management company, the
prison now holds only inmates 18 and older, and Youth is out of its name. Big
Bonus: In 2012, Geo had revenue of $1.48 billion, up from $569 million 10
years earlier, with net income of $135 million. George Zoley, its chairman
and chief executive officer, received almost $6 million last year, including
a $2.2 million bonus for profit surpassing targets, according to company
filings. The company has drawn repeated scrutiny and criticism from
regulators and lawyers for inmates, faulting it for dangerous or derelict
care. Geo lost civil wrongful-death lawsuits in Texas and Oklahoma, including
a $47.5 million jury award in Texas state court in 2006 to the family of an
inmate beaten to death with padlock-stuffed socks four days before his
release, according to court documents. The company appealed that verdict
before settling. The company said it would appeal the Oklahoma ruling. Geo's
contracts to house Idaho and Texas inmates at two prisons in Texas were
canceled after state reports of unsafe conditions. Inmates Sue: In November
2010, inmates at Walnut Grove sued Mississippi and Geo in federal court in
Jackson over conditions there. In an order last year, U.S. District Court
Judge Carlton Reeves, who oversaw that lawsuit, said what happened at Walnut
Grove "paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in
the civilized world." Geo's Paez said the judge based his order partly on the
Justice Department report about Walnut Grove, which related to events that
largely took place either before Geo took over or in the first few months
after it assumed management of the prison. As few as two corrections officers
worked units with 240 inmates during the day, or one for 120 prisoners,
according to a 2011 report to the state by MGT of America Inc., a
Tallahassee, Florida-based consulting firm. That ratio is more than 10 times
what's typical at youth facilities, said Ned Loughran, executive director of
the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators. "I've never seen ratios
that risky in terms of supervising kids," he said. The Walnut Grove prison
sits on the edge of a town of about 500, where the downtown has a gas
station, two diners, a city hall and a bank. It had lost one of its biggest
employers, a glove factory, when community leaders decided to pursue a
private prison in a quest for jobs and revenue. Dying Town: "The town was
dying," Mayor J. Brian Gomillion said. "We struggled even after we opened.
But it re-invigorated the community." State Representative Bennett Malone, a
Democrat whose district included the area and who led the corrections
committee in the Mississippi House, championed the prison. It was originally
authorized to hold 500 inmates as old as 19. The prison would be the biggest
economic boon the area had ever seen and give troubled boys a second chance,
with teachers, counselors, spiritual advisers, psychologists and training,
Malone and other backers told the Jackson Clarion Ledger Newspaper at the
time.Expanded Capacity: The prison opened in 2001. Cornell took over about a
decade ago, predicting annual revenue of $11 million. By 2007, through
legislation pushed by Malone, Mississippi had expanded Walnut Grove's
permitted capacity to 1,500 inmates as old as 22. "It never pleases me to see
young people locked up, but it does please me to know the custody and care
will be provided by the dedicated people of my district," Malone said at
agroundbreaking for the expansion. Malone got campaign contributions of
$2,000 from Cornell and $1,000 from Geo in 2006, accounting for 30 percent of
what he raised that year, state campaign-finance reports show. Malone didn't
respond to e-mails and telephone calls seeking comment. When Geo bought
Cornell in August 2010 for $730 million in cash, stock and debt, the prison
was showing signs of strain. A riot had hospitalized six young inmates. A
2010 legislative audit showed that staff levels had failed to keep pace with
the expanding population. By then, the town depended on the prison, which now
pays it $180,000 a year, or a quarter of its budget. Merchants saw little of
the economic boom once promised, said Carl Sistrunk, owner of the gas station
where the prison fuels transport vehicles. Hurting Community: "It has helped
and it has hurt, if you ask me," Sistrunk said. "You hear about some of the
things going on in there and that hurts us all." Caleb Williams was 12 when
Malone introduced the legislation creating Walnut Grove -- and already headed
there. One of 11 children of a single mother on welfare in Starkville and in
foster care since age three, Williams was about to be kicked out of school,
was stealing and dealing drugs and could barely read or write, he recalled.
"I wasn't a bad child," he said. "I was just misguided. I had my heart set on
having things that weren't there." Williams landed in Walnut Grove after he
was arrested at age 16 for stealing a car's compact-disc player, then
stabbing an officer with a pen while trying to flee. Williams admits all
except the stabbing. Honors Student: Ross Walton was on a different path. An
honors student, he played the piano, volunteered with Habitat for Humanity
and had a third-degree Karate black belt, activities he said were pushed by a
mother determined to keep him from becoming another locked-up black man from
the Mississippi Delta. Walton entered Walnut Grove at 18, convicted of
aggravated assault after a fight in a bowling alley, his first brush with the
law. The prison was nothing like its backers once promised, former inmates
said. Gangs ruled the 60-inmate, 30-cell housing units, Williams and Walton
said. There were at least 13 present in the facility, according to the 2010
audit. Corrections officers sometimes slept while prisoners fought, the
inmates said. Assaults were common. Officers often did nothing. Some provoked
fights and then used pepper spray and other deterrents, said Williams. "You
saw blood on the floor, everywhere," he said. 'Inappropriate Relationships:'
Their accounts are echoed in the 2012 Justice Department report and the
ACLU-backed lawsuit, which was settled last year. The federal report found
"numerous inappropriate relationships between staff and youth," with
corrections officers giving inmates personal mobile phone numbers, wiring
money to their commissary accounts and providing them with banned items,
including weapons. State oversight was minimal. The 2011 MGT report found no
evidence the state ever surveyed inmates, reviewed their records, or did
annual checks of prison operations, as required under the contract. A state
monitor received no training and relied on the company running the facility
for data, which the state never attempted to verify, it said. Staff shortages
were chronic, according to inmates and Cleveland McAfee, a former corrections
officer. The prison struggled to retain workers, with many quitting within
weeks of starting work, McAfee said. After he was promoted to lieutenant, he
frequently had to fill in on the front line. "I just got burned out because
they just didn't have the staff," McAfee said. Delayed Releases: The
shortages led to lockdowns, according to Walton and the inmate lawsuit that
was also backed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That meant they couldn't
go to school, slowing the release of those who had to complete high-school
equivalency degrees to get out, Walton said. "The longer the stay, the more
money the prison makes," he said. Corrections officers were eager to make
more money and smuggling was rampant, said Williams. "If they'll bring in a
pack of gum, they'll bring in a pack of T-shirts," he said. "If they bring in
a pack of T-shirts, they'll bring in a knife." In fiscal 2010, officials
confiscated 137 weapons at the prison, according to the audit by the
Mississippi legislature. There were 80 assaults with weapons on staff and
inmates, a rate of one every five days. Seventy percent of Walnut Grove's
security staff was female, according to the 2011 consultant's report. Sexual
tension ran high. In one incident, a female corrections officer stripped off
her shirt in a housing-unit control center and danced "provocatively" over
four hours in front of inmates, touching one inappropriately," the Justice
Department said. Sexual Tensions: Inmates flirted with the female officers
and fought over them. They got propositioned by them and punished if they
rebuffed them, with written reprimands that added months to sentences, Walton
said. "Because you would not perform a sexual act with them, they make you
stay longer," he said. "We would have brand new guards come through, doing a
walk-through right out of training. They would come through telling us they
were looking for boyfriends, looking for a man, before they even started
their jobs." "They were just hiring anybody to fill those spots and that made
it worse, because they didn't know what they were doing," he said. "I had one
guard -- I was older than her." Safety depended on staying out of the common
areas in each 60-inmate cell unit. Avoiding 'Sharks: Williams spent his first
two years confined to his zone, unable to attend school or go outside. He
stayed in his cell 23 hours a day, teaching himself to read and writing in
journals. He learned to lip read to anticipate fights and avoid violence that
corrections officers were too few or too scared to prevent. He didn't have to
worry about food or shelter, Williams said. "All I had to worry about was
being around these sharks, these lions and tigers and bears, in this
poisonous world, where people are waking up with madness on their minds," he
said. Berl Goff, a former captain at Walnut Grove, was hired to improve
security in November 2009 by then-warden Brick Tripp. Goff, an experienced
corrections officer, said the prison was having three or four
bloodshed-causing fights every week. "It goes back to the fact that these
folks were not trained right," he said of the staff. "They had never worked
in a real prison." After four months on the job, Goff said he'd made
progress. Then he intercepted a ballot inmates were passing between cells. A
gang called the Vice Lords was voting on whether to attack a rival group's
leader. Goff's bosses rebuffed his request for more help: "They told me to
handle it," he said. Bloody Riot: Eighteen corrections officers were at the
prison the day of the assault, he said -- one for every 60 prisoners. One, a
gang member herself, walked through the cellblock freeing Vice Lords, then
left. When the beatings and stabbings stopped, six inmates were rushed to the
hospital, one with permanent brain damage. "You got 60 inmates there and it's
just me," said McAfee, the former guard and one of those who responded to the
melee. "You just had to sit there and wait while people are fighting. It was
a horrible experience." The worst hurt was Michael McIntosh, then 20. Six
weeks after the incident, his father found him in a hospital three hours away
in Greenville. The younger McIntosh's eyes were red and blinded by blood. He
had a baseball-sized lump on his head, multiple stab wounds and brain damage.
He made noises like a small child. Blinded Son: "He couldn't see me," said
his father, Michael McIntosh Sr. "He was just reaching, saying 'Daaa.'" Geo
bought Cornell in August 2010, adding Walnut Grove to the two other prisons
it ran in Mississippi. The three delivered $44.9 million in revenue the next
year, according to Geo's 2012 annual report. Paez, the Geo spokesman, said
the company inherited the prison's troubles. "Any reasonable party would
agree that significant resources, time and effort would be required to turn
around a facility that had faced significant operational problems for several
years," Paez said in a the e-mail. "That is in fact what Geo did." Walnut
Grove received an accreditation score of 100 percent in an audit conducted in
early 2012 by the American Correctional Association, an Alexandria,
Virginia-based organization that represents public and private prisons, Paez
said. Substantially Unchanged: The 2012 Justice Department report said key personnel, policies and training at the prison "did not
change substantially, despite Geo's claim that it made corrective reforms."
Goff, the former prison captain, said staffing got worse under Geo, which
kept 5 percent of positions vacant. For weeks at a time, he said he had 13 to
15 officers on the night shift, instead of the 23 he needed. "There were
nights when I was captain when I walked all night long, all night by myself,"
Goff said. "There was no one in the control centers. They kept saying we had
to economize." At a March 2012 hearing at the federal courthouse in Jackson,
where the settlement of the civil lawsuit against the prison and the state
was reviewed, Walnut Grove inmates described
continuing violence behind the facility's walls. One 15-year-old said the
advice of a judge, who wanted him to have special protection, was ignored.
"He didn't want me in the cell with nobody smarter than me and nobody older
than me," the inmate said. Prison administrators gave him a 19-year-old
cellmate who had raped him days earlier. Bloomberg News doesn't identify
victims of sexual assault. Perpetrators Unpunished: "I just have not heard
anything that says to me that any of these perpetrators, any of these people,
have paid the price for what they have done to some of these children," said
Reeves, the federal judge presiding over the hearing. There are five
privately run prisons in Mississippi, though one houses only inmates
fromCalifornia, according to the state Corrections Department. Three other
prisons are run by the state. In fiscal 2012, Walnut Grove had 284 assaults,
the April court filing shows, more than in any of the three other private
prisons with Mississippi inmates. It also exceeded the most violent state
facility, which had three times the population. Mississippi replaced Geo as
Walnut Grove's operator a year ago. "We moved them out, because that's just
totally unacceptable," said Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican elected in
2011, referring to the troubles at Walnut Grove. "We just won't tolerate that
type of behavior, and we're working with the Justice Department to be sure it
doesn't happen again." Isolated Situation: "Private prisons have worked
well," he said. "For years, we've had a lot of success with them. This was
one bad incident, we got rid of the player involved, and we got another
company in that we think will do a better job." Geo's Paez said it has a
long-standing record of "adhering to industry-leading standards set by
independent accreditation entities" and rehabilitating prisoners with
programs to help them re-enter society. "Our company is proud of the
incredible dedication and effort of our more than 18,000 employees worldwide,
who strive every day to make a difference in the lives of the more than
60,000 men and women who are entrusted daily to our care," he said. Walnut
Grove is now run by Management & Training Corp., a closely held company
based in Centerville, Utah. Brick Tripp, Walnut Grove's former warden, runs
another Geo prison in North Carolina. Through Paez, he declined to comment.
Goff, the former captain, now works for another private prison company he
says is better run. McIntosh will be released in September and only sometimes
remembers life before his injury, his father said. Walton is a 28-year-old
accounting student at Mississippi State University in Starkville. He says
Walnut Grove "scarred me; I will never be the same." Williams owns a barber
shop in Greenville, where he sleeps at night on a cot in a storage room. It's
the same dimensions as his cell in Walnut Grove.
WALNUT GROVE -- Most privately run
prisons in Mississippi had assault rates two to three times higher than
state-run prisons in 2012, a new report shows. Walnut Grove Correctional
Facility, one private prison in Mississippi, had an assault rate of 27 per
100 prisoners last year, according to the report filed by monitors charged
with making sure the prison complies with an agreement to improve safety and
living conditions. The highest assault rate at a state or regional prison run
by the state Department of Corrections was 7 per 100 inmates, the report
said. Differences in population and custody levels may be one reason for the
higher rates of violence in private prisons. "The privates may have more
inmates in higher custody levels," resulting in a more-violent inmate
population, prisoners' rights attorney Ron Welch said. "Or, private
prisons have higher staffing turnover, so the staffing may be too thin and
inmates may be not be properly supervised." Mississippi began relying on
private prisons after 1996 when lawmakers decided convicts must serve at
least 85 percent of their sentences. State law mandates private prisons
provide their services for 10 percent less than it would cost the state.
"That's really when private prisons started booming, especially in
Mississippi, because we were poor like we are now," said Christopher
Epps, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which has an
annual budget of almost $340 million. "It sounded good that you could go
out and contract to build a prison and get somebody to operate at 10 percent
cheaper than we can." The contractors save money by paying their staff
less than state employees are paid, firing employees in a quick and
less-expensive manner, and by providing shorter educational and vocational
programs to inmates, Epps said. The state spends an average of $49.76 per
inmate per day at its own prisons, for example, and pays the operator of
Walnut Grove $37.68 per inmate per day. But the new report renews questions
about the added risks. The court monitor's report follows a series of riots
and allegations of abuse and hazardous conditions at other privately run
prisons in Mississippi in the past year. "I've had two (guards) arrested
in the last two days," said Patricia Doty, the deputy warden at Walnut
Grove, in late March. The prison is run by Management and Training Corp. of
Utah. Doty said she has had problems retaining staff. Almost half the guards
who started in January have already quit or been fired. Concerns over safety,
liability, compliance and cost have led some states to eschew private
prisons. Illinois and New York won't allow private prisons, and Louisiana has
a moratorium on new contracts, though Gov. Bobby Jindal has recently
supported legislation allowing privatization. In late March, the New
Hampshire House of Representatives voted for a bill that would ban private
prisons. Nevertheless, the private prison industry continues to grow. At
least 30 states have contracts with these companies. The companies In
Mississippi, three companies have operated six prisons over the years: The
GEO Group, Corrections Corporation of America, and Management and Training
Corp. However, The GEO Group, which ran Walnut Grove and two other prisons,
left the state in 2012. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
filed a complaint in December 2011 against the East Mississippi Correctional
Facility alleging employees were exposed to violence due to staff shortage
and inadequate staff training. The GEO Group, which ran the prison, was fined
more than $100,000. Earlier in 2011, an inmate there stabbed a guard in the
face. "No one was supposed to be in the housing units alone, but there
wasn't enough staff there to follow that directive," said Berl Goff, who
was working there at the time as captain and unit manager. The GEO Group did
not respond to repeated requests for comments. Conditions at Tallahatchie
County Correctional Facility in the Delta are also troublesome, said Patrick
Perry, a former guard there. Perry recalled a day in the prison when he tried
to report an inmate riot to supervisors but the call never went through.
"We were supposed to have a five-week (training) class, and we were
barely in class three weeks when they put us on the floor," he said.
"We never went back to finish our training because they were always
short (on staff). Every day it's at least 40 to 50 officers short, and people
are frustrated because they got to do the job of three or four
officers." Repeated requests to Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation
of America for comments were not answered. The future In many circles, people
are looking to solutions, both locally and nationally, to the bursting levels
of prison populations. The economic downturn has also pushed governments to
look for money-saving options. "The long-term growth opportunities of
our business remain very attractive," Corrections Corporation of America
told investors in its annual report. Corrections Corporation of America and
The GEO Group posted combined profits of more than $300 million in 2012.
Their stocks have jumped 35 percent or more in a year. In Mississippi, which
has the nation's second-highest incarceration rate, officials are suggesting
alternatives such as reducing low-risk offenses to misdemeanors, placing more
inmates under house arrest, and offering earlier parole. The court monitor's
report about widespread problems at Walnut Grove and other private prisons
may accelerate those discussions. "On its face, that's a huge disparity
(between violence rates at private prisons and state prisons). If inmates in
private prisons are not as safe as those in the state, something needs to be
done about it," Welch said. "The PEER (Performance Evaluation and
Expenditure Review) committee should investigate and come up with
recommendations as to whether the (private prison) contracts need to be
changed, whether there are performance requirements that ought to be
included." Jody Owens, managing staff attorney at the Southern Poverty
Law Center, said: "The state has done a better job on keeping violence
lower than private prisons can …. Whatever discount private prisons offer,
they do so at the jeopardy of the inmates in their care." Kathryn
Royals, a Jackson native, is a graduate student in the mass communications
program at LSU. She produced this story using research from her thesis on
private prisons in the state. Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/04/20/4608209/report-private-prisons-in-state.html#storylink=cpy June
14, 2012 Huffington Post June
7, 2012 WTOK June
7, 2012 AP May
20, 2012 WLBT April
24, 2012 NPR April
20, 2012 AP March
29, 2012 Sun Herald March
24, 2012 AP March
21, 2012 AP February,
27, 2012 AP October
26, 2011 Ya'll Politics May 17, 2011 NEMS Daily
Journal May 13, 2011 The Root May 5, 2011 Clarion
Ledger February 28, 2011 Clarion
Ledger January 12, 2011 AP January 10, 2011 Clarion-Ledger November 18, 2010 Courthouse
News November 17, 2010 Clarion-Ledger November 16, 2010 AP November 3, 2010 WXVT December 8, 2004 Commercial
Appeal Walnut Grove Transition
Center April 21, 2012 AP October 25, 2011 AP October 21, 2009 Clarion
Ledger Wilkinson
Correctional Facility WOODVILLE (AP) — A prison official
says one inmate has died and several were injured in a fight at a prison in
Wilkinson County that resulted in the facility being put on lockdown.
Wilkinson County Correctional Facility spokesman Issa Arnita says inmate
Kendrick Walker died in a fight involving six inmates Sunday afternoon in one
of the prison's housing units. Another inmate was seriously injured. Four
others have injuries that aren't life-threatening. Arnita says the
correctional facility remains on lockdown Monday and the death is being
investigated. He says authorities don't yet know the motive behind the fight.
Mississippi Department of Corrections records indicate that the 33-year-old
Walker was serving a 10-year sentence for convictions including cocaine
possession, marijuana possession with intent to distribute and possession of
a firearm by a convicted felon. Those charges originated in Franklin and Pike
counties. Walker's tentative release date was May 2015. Utah-based Management
& Training Corp. runs the prison, which has 950 inmates. A spokeswoman
for Department of Corrections referred comment to MTC. An inmate died at the
same prison in April 2013 in a broader disturbance, when it was run by
Corrections Corporation of America.
Last year, a
woman—who asked that her name not be printed—drove 125 miles through a
thunderstorm from her home in the Jackson metro to visit her son at Wilkinson
County Correctional Facility in Woodville. Even though she'd called the
previous day to make sure the prison was allowing visits, when she arrived,
prison staff informed her that visits had been cancelled. "I sat at that
desk and cried like a baby. I hadn't seen my son in three months. I drove 125
miles just to talk to him for an hour through the phone," she said. The
woman's son complained that the understaffed prison was often locked down,
served poor quality food and offered little to no educational programs even
though many prisoners are under court orders to work toward high-school
equivalency diplomas. "He would say, 'Mom, these people treat you like
you ain't nothing,'" the woman said. A Utah-based private-prison firm
hopes that it can turn things around at the Wilkinson County facility.
Starting July 1, when the state's fiscal year begins, Management & Training
Corporation will assume operations at the 1,000-bed facility under a
five-year contract. Previously, Corrections Corporation of America held the
contract to run the prison with the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Issa Arnita, an MTC spokesman, said the company puts safety and security
first but prides itself on its educational programming. He added that MTC,
which is also the nation's largest contractor for the Job Corps program, has
not yet made any specific plans for when it takes over at Wilkinson County.
In recent months, the Woodville prison has seen its share of problems. In
April, a Jackson man, Demond Flowers, 21,was stabbed
to death during a weekend disturbance. In 2011, Flowers was convicted of
vehicle burglary and robbery in Hinds County and sentenced to serve 18 years.
Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private corrections
firm, operates the Wilkinson County prison, as well as the Tallahatchie
County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler and the federal Adams County
Correctional Facility in Natchez. MTC runs East Mississippi Correctional
Facility in Meridian, Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Leake
County and Marshall County Correction Facility in Holly Springs. Over the
years, Mississippi has had a number of high-profile lawsuits resulting from
the state contracting with private corrections firms. In March 2012, lawyers
representing a group of boys and young men who alleged abuse at Walnut Grove,
then owned by Florida-based GEO Group, reached a settlement in the case. The
suit charged prison managers with creating a violent and corrupt culture
where staff sold drugs in the prison and engaged in sex with the youths they
were charged with supervising. In late 2011, MDOC allowed CCA to break its
contract to operate the 1,172-bed Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood.
MTC recently won a contract from the federal Bureau of Prisons to run that
facility in LeFlore County, but federal budget cuts have stalled plans to
fill the prison with inmates. Patrick Perry, a former correctional officer at
a CCA-run prison in the Mississippi Delta who is now an anti-privatization
advocate, started an online petition after Flowers' death at Wilkinson
County, calling on Mississippi officials to halt further expansion of private
facilities to protect prisoners and staff. Despite MDOC switching management
firms, Perry remains doubtful that conditions will improve. "It's still
a private prison company. It's still the same thing," he said. "CCA
is the biggest one, and if they don't staff (the prison) like it's supposed
to be staffed, and GEO didn't do it when they had Walnut Grove—and they were
No. 2—I know MTC won't do it."
A new management company will take over operations of the Wilkinson County
Correctional Facility in July. In a news release from Management and Training
Corporation, a Utah-based private corrections company, MTC officials
announced the company had received a five-year contract from the Mississippi
Department of Corrections to operate the state prison facility in Woodville.
The news release says MTC plans to retain the "vast majority" of WCCF's
current employees. Corrections Corporation of America — the same company that
runs the federal immigration prison north of Natchez, the Adams County
Correctional Center —currently operates WCCF. The MTC contract has two
12-month options for extension.MTC currently operates in Mississippi at the
East Mississippi, Walnut Grove and Marshal County correctional facilities.
"MTC prides itself on performance and integrity. We look forward to a long
and successful partnership with the Department of Corrections and the
community of Woodville," MTC Senior Vice President of Corrections Odie
Washington said. June 20, 2012 AP December 29, 2011 WLBT November 12, 2009 The
Prisoner of the Census November 11, 2004 The
Advocate July 15, 2002