ACLU-AZ on Parsons v Ryan: 9th Circuit affirms AZ DOC prisoner class action may proceed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 5, 2014

CONTACT:
Alexandra Ringe, ACLU National, 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org
Steve Kilar, ACLU of Arizona, 602-492-8540, skilar@acluaz.org
Don Specter, Prison Law Office, 510-280-2621, dspecter@prisonlaw.com

 

33,000 Arizona Prisoners Now Can Sue State Over Health Care, Solitary Confinement

 

SAN FRANCISCO – Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Arizona and the Prison Law Office can move forward with a lawsuit against the state of Arizona on behalf of all 33,000 prisoners in the state’s 10 prisons and all future prisoners. The ruling is critical to obtaining necessary systemic changes to conditions of confinement in the Arizona Department of Correction (ADC), and is a key victory for civil rights plaintiffs throughout the country.

"The State of Arizona has long ignored the basic needs of people confined in its prisons, including the constitutional mandate to provide adequate health care. Prisoners have suffered unnecessarily and even died while waiting for basic care," said David Fathi, Director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, who argued the case for the prisoners in the Court of Appeals. "This ruling brings us closer to requiring the executive and legislative branches to end their neglect and indifference once and for all."

The groups filed the federal lawsuit in 2012, challenging years of inattention to the health needs of state prisoners and improper and excessive use of solitary confinement, resulting in serious harms and unnecessary deaths. Judge Neil V. Wake of the U.S. District Court in Phoenix certified the case as a class action in March 2013; today’s decision affirms that ruling.

The Court of Appeals listed failing to hire enough medical staff, failing to fill prescriptions, denying inmates access to medical specialists, adopting a de facto “extraction only” policy for dental issues, and depriving suicidal and mentally ill inmates access to basic mental health care.

The Court allowed the ACLU and the Prison Law Office to represent the prison population in Arizona as a class because all the prisoners shared a common interest in not being subjected to a "substantial risk of serious harm resulting from exposure to the [ADC’s] policies and practices governing health care." "The Court rejected the state’s arguments that the prisoners don’t have enough in common to warrant class action status, adding that the state had a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the law:

“[G]iven that every inmate in ADC custody is likely to require medical, mental health, and dental care, each of the named plaintiffs is similarly positioned to all other ADC inmates with respect to a substantial risk of serious harm resulting from exposure to the defendants’ policies and practices governing health care.”

In addition to seeking adequate medical, mental health, and dental care for Arizona’s prisoners, the lawsuit challenges the state prisons’ use of solitary confinement.

"Among our plaintiffs are the seriously mentally ill and other prisoners whose mental health has markedly deteriorated in solitary confinement – weeks, months, sometimes years of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation," said Don Specter, Director of the Prison Law Office. "Sometimes the damage is permanent. Arizona must stop this cruel and unusual punishment."

The case, Parsons v. Ryan, is scheduled to go to trial in October 2014.

In addition to the ACLU and the Prison Law Office, other attorneys on the case are Perkins Coie LLP, Jones Day, and the Arizona Center for Disability Law.

Click here to read the Ninth Circuit opinion.

Click here to learn more about Parsons v. Ryan.

Fathi: Solitary Confinement in Arizona's state prisons

Click here for the story of what solitary confinement in Arizona 
did to one young man...

 

----------From the ACLU Blog of Rights---------

Solitary Confinement in Arizona: Cruel and Unusual

Posted by David Fathi, 

ACLU-National Prison Project 

March 6, 2012 at 1:09pm 

A class action lawsuit filed today by the ACLU, along with the Prison Law Office, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms Jones Day and Perkins Coie, alleges that the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) houses thousands of prisoners in solitary confinement conditions so harsh they violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. While other states also use solitary confinement, Arizona has added features that seem designed to gratuitously increase suffering. The cells in that state's supermax Special Management Units (SMUs) were deliberately constructed with no windows to the outside, so prisoners — many of whom have no means of telling the time — become disoriented and confused, not knowing the whether it is day or night. The cells are often illuminated 24 hours a day, making sleep difficult and further contributing to prisoners' disorientation and mental deterioration.

Some prisoners in solitary spend all but six hours a week alone in their cells. Their only respite occurs when they are taken to a slightly larger windowless cell, with no equipment, for "exercise." Many prisoners refuse to go, because the cell is so small that it doesn't allow meaningful exercise, and because prisoners are placed in restraints and strip-searched when going to and returning from the cell. And in a final cruelty, ADC reasons that because prisoners in solitary don't get much exercise, they don't need much food — some receive only two meals a day.

It's long been known that solitary confinement is extraordinarily damaging to mental health, often inducing mental illness in previously healthy prisoners. But it's particularly damaging to those with pre-existing mental illness. For these prisoners, solitary poses a grave risk of psychiatric injury, self-harm, and even suicide. Deprived of the social interaction that is essential to keep them grounded in reality, many prisoners with mental illness experience catastrophic and often irreversible psychiatric deterioration.

Courts have ruled that prisoners with mental illness suffer such grievous harm in solitary confinement that it violates the Eighth Amendment to house them there. One court compared putting a person with mental illness in solitary to "putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe." As a result, many states that use solitary confinement exclude the mentally ill. But not Arizona — even prisoners whom ADC itself has classified as "seriously mentally ill" are held in solitary.

In recent years, states as diverse as Mississippi, Colorado, and Maine have reduced their use of solitary confinement, generating substantial cost savings and experiencing no adverse effects on public safety. But Arizona remains an enthusiastic practitioner, with four large prisons devoted chiefly or exclusively to holding prisoners in solitary.

Last month Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced plans to close Tamms Correctional Center, that state's supermax prison. Tamms has long been criticized for its harsh conditions of solitary confinement — a federal judge found that it inflicts "lasting psychological and emotional harm" on prisoners — and the per-prisoner cost of Tamms is three times the state average. Arizona should follow Illinois' example. It would be a victory for fiscal prudence as well as human rights.

Take action today: go here to sign our pledge against solitary.

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ADC threatened with class action suit for gross medical and psychiatric neglect.

This article about the Prison Law Office and ACLU taking the ADC to court has been a long time in coming for survivors of prison suicides and gross neglect, and for those prisoners still inside - thank you Bob Ortega and AZ Republic. Here's the actual letter that was sent to Chuck Ryan listing all the allegations against his department.

In the first 2 1/2 years of his tenure, Chuck Ryan presided over 28 suicides. That's almost one per month. During that time the prison population remained relatively stable - even dropping a bit last year. In the 2 1/2 years that preceded Ryan, under Dora Schriro, there were only 12 suicides - less than 1 every two months.

Additionally, both Shannon Palmer and James Jennings were murdered by their cellies because Shannon and James were psychotic and isolated with intolerant cellies (in Shannon's case, his cellie was also psychotic). 

Then there are the cases of outrageous neglect: Marcia Powell was left to die in her feces with burns on her body in an outdoor cage while on a 10-minute suicide watch; Huberta Parlee died after two days of begging for treatment for a perforated ulcer; Brenda Todd sought medical attention repeatedly before being found dead in her cell one morning last winter. The list goes on.

These are not just isolated incidents or the consequences of budget cuts made years ago. Chuck Ryan decides how to distribute resources, and sets the tone for how prisoners are to be treated through his policies, practices in disciplining staff, and promotions of bullies like himself. His administration has reduced rehabilitative programs to negligible levels, has increased medical co-pays while decreasing prisoner earnings, has eliminated things like a suicide prevention program that trained prisoners as aides, has compromised positive community and family support to prisoners by implementing fees for visitors, and has allowed rates of violence to skyrocket unchecked...

It is no wonder that so many prisoners have grown so demoralized that they've killed themselves in his custody in record numbers. One of many questions is why there's such a racial disparity in those suicides.

AZ Department of Corrections 

November 22, 2011 

These are the victims of our collective indifference, by gender, race and age: 

Jan - June 2009 (5 suicides in 6mos): Angela Soto (MexAmer, 28) Harvey Rymer (W, 33), Angel Torres (MexAmer, 32) Dung Ung (AsnAmer, 32), Caesar Bojorquez (MexNatl, 37)

July - June 2010 (9 suicides in 12 months): Erick Cervantes (MexAmer, 30) Douglas Nunn (W, 33), Hernan Cuevas (MexAmer, 18) Monte McCarty (W, 46), Patricia Velez (MexAmer, 24), Jerry Kulp (AfAmer, 17), Jessie Cota, (MexAm, 28) James Adams (W, 46),Eric Bybee (W, 32)

July - June 2011 (14 suicides in 12 months): Tony Lester (NA, 26), Robert Medina (MexAm, 29), Geshell Fernandez (NA, 28) Patrick Lee Ross, (AfAmer, 28), Lasasha Cherry (AfAmer, 23) Rosario Bojorquez-Rodriguez (MexNat, 29), Duron Cunningham (AfAmer, 40) James Galloway (W, 54), Ronald Richie (W, 42) Susan Lopez (MexAmer, 35), Michael Tovar, (MexAmer, 20) Carey Wheatley (AfAmer, 49), Michael Pellicer (AfAmer, 35) Luis Moscoso-Hernandez (MexNat, 28)

Condolences to all the loved one's of AZ state prison violence, neglect, and suicide...
 

-----------------from the AZ Republic-------------------

Prison inmates in Arizona crying foul over medical care

State to investigate medical allegations

Bob Ortega

Dec. 5, 2011 11:06 PM

The Arizona Republic

To stave off a lawsuit, Arizona's Department of Corrections has agreed to investigate scores of complaints by inmates that they are routinely denied medical care for weeks or months even for severe, life-threatening conditions. Inmates who have lost sight, had body parts amputated or been severely disfigured, among other gruesome examples, say proper medical care could have prevented needless suffering.

Based on those allegations, a legal coalition has accused the state of chronically and systemically denying medical and mental-health care to inmates, violating state and federal laws and the U.S. Constitution.

The Prison Law Office, a legal-advocacy group for prisoners nationwide, also charges that lack of care may contribute to a prison suicide rate in Arizona that is more than double the national average, with 14 reported suicides in the fiscal year that ended last June.

Interviews with current and former prisoners and dozens of inmate letters of complaint obtained by The Arizona Republic raise similar concerns.

Corrections officials say they have found no evidence of systemic problems, although they say that pending plans to privatize prison health care have made it harder to fill medical-staff vacancies and that rule changes two years ago that cut payment levels to outside contractors also crimped access to care.

But prisoner advocates say the problems are longer-standing.

Allegations made by inmates, prisoner advocates and attorneys include:

A diabetic prisoner, while waiting months for insulin, lost sight completely in one eye and partially in the other.

An epileptic who wasn't given his medications suffered repeated seizures for weeks.

A man with a growth on his penis was denied medical treatment for two years. Doctors ultimately diagnosed a cancerous tumor on his penis; the organ had to be amputated, and doctors told him the cancer had spread to his stomach.

An inmate with a cancerous growth on his lip waited seven months for treatment. Most of his lip and mouth were removed, leaving him permanently disfigured.

Prison medical staff members have repeatedly denied treatment to Tucson inmate Horace Sublett for Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer, despite documentation, including from the VA hospital in Phoenix and other outside doctors confirming that the Navy veteran, 82, has the disease.

Prisoners with emphysema, end-state renal disease and other illnesses reported being denied treatment or medication, leading to complications and permanent side effects.

Corrections officials maintain that they provided appropriate care in these cases. Karyn Klausner, the department's general counsel, said inmates' loss of sight, amputation of the penis and disfiguring facial surgery were not related to any delays in treatment.

Donald Specter, executive director of the San Quentin, Calif.-based Prison Law Office, described his group's concerns in an Oct. 12 letter to state Corrections Director Charles Ryan.

"State prison officials are deliberately indifferent to the serious health-care needs of prisoners and to the prisoners' unnecessary and significant pain, suffering and even deaths," Specter wrote.

That letter, which lists dozens of specific allegations without naming the inmates affected and which has been obtained by The Republic, asked Ryan to agree to a court injunction to address problems as a way of avoiding a lawsuit in federal court.

In May, Specter and the Prison Law Office won landmark litigation against the California Department of Corrections. In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court required California to release about 30,000 prisoners to alleviate unconstitutional prison overcrowding.

On Nov. 17, Arizona's Department of Corrections signed an agreement to investigate the medical claims, and the California group agreed to delay any lawsuit for three months.

But, so far, Ryan said, "We don't see any systemic indication of problems or evidence of deliberate indifference."

Ryan added that the department demanded the group provide inmates' names so it could verify or disprove the claims.

Specter said his group is asking inmates whether they are willing to be identified. Many prisoners fear retaliation for speaking out.

The department doesn't deny there are problems.

"Are there instances where an inmate didn't receive medications or treatment in a timely fashion? Yes," Klausner said. "But is it systemic? No."

The Prison Law Office noted that in 2009, the Arizona State Prison Complex-Eyman in Florence had only one half-time psychiatrist for more than 1,000 patients who were on mental-health medications. As of last month, that position was vacant.

Earlier this year, inmates at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville often weren't seen by mental-health staff for six months or more, according to staff quoted in the group's letter.

"We're out of compliance with our own policies," Michael Breslow, then- deputy medical director for psychiatry, warned Ryan in a Sept. 13, 2009, e-mail obtained by the law group through an Information Act request. "The lack of treatment represents an escalating danger to the community, the staff and the inmates," Breslow said.

Staff shortages also affect medical care. Both the Arizona State Prison Complex-Tucson and the Eyman unit, which house more than 5,100 prisoners each, are supposed to have five doctors on staff. In April, Eyman had two doctors and a third working half-time; Tucson had two, according to department staffing reports.

Ryan and Klausner said Corrections has improved mental-health and medical care in recent months. Ryan said Corrections provided six hours of training in suicide prevention, crisis intervention and emergency response to 8,806 staff members who have direct contact with inmates.

That training follows, among other incidents, the July 2010 suicide of Tony Lester, a mentally ill inmate at the Tucson prison. An internal investigation found that officers stood by for 23 minutes without intervening after Lester slit his throat, wrists and groin with razor blades that he wasn't supposed to have.

Ryan also said Corrections has filled 172 health-care and mental-health positions since June 23 -- including vacancies for doctors at the Eyman and Tucson prisons.

However, the overall medical-staff vacancy rate has barely budged. In April, 23 percent of positions were unfilled. As of the end of November, 22 percent were unfilled, according to staffing reports.

Ryan said the department also has reduced the waiting time for inmates who require medical treatment outside the prisons -- from an average of 77 days early last year to an average of 49 days as of this month.

But inmates say months-long waits for care and denials of prescribed medicine and medical supplies continue to be routine.

"It's a real big problem, and they're keeping it hush-hush," former inmate Eric Wright said in an interview. Wright was released from the state prison in Tucson last month after serving more than four years on drug charges. Wright said a doctor prescribed back surgery in 2008 for an injury he suffered in prison.

"Nothing in my sentence called for the death penalty," said former inmate Martin Feldman, 67, who also had difficulties receiving timely prison medical care for osteomyelitis (a chronic bone infection) and obstructed coronary arteries. Feldman recently was released after serving nearly two years for a drug violation.

Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson declined to comment on Wright's and Feldman's cases, saying Corrections had to retrieve their medical records from archives.

Some of the shortfall in medical care stemmed from legislation lawmakers advocated as cutting costs.

In mid-2009, the Republican-led Arizona Legislature passed laws requiring Corrections to privatize prison medical care and to pay providers at a rate no higher than that paid by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state's Medicare provider.

According to Corrections officials, within months of that law's passage, there were negative repercussions:

Health-care employees, figuring their jobs were on the chopping block, started leaving in droves. Corrections spent $5.3 million less on full-time health-care staff salaries this past fiscal year than two years earlier, a 13.5 percent drop. The department has used temporary, part-time workers to partially close that gap. And many contract providers such as Carondelet Health Network stopped doing business with Corrections, saying the reimbursement rates were too low. Ryan said the department eventually found other providers.

These issues are not new. In January 2009, well before lawmakers acted, more than one in four health-care positions was vacant, and the waiting time for outside medical care averaged 11 weeks, according to the department.

In the fiscal year ending last June, Corrections spent $111.3 million, or an average of $3,258 per inmate, on health care, down 27 percent from $140.5 million, or an average of $4,482 per inmate, two years earlier.

In recent years, inmates have reported scores of incidents to prisoner advocates such as the Arizona Justice Project, which helps inmates with wrongful convictions; Middle Ground Prison Reform, a prisoner-rights group; Lynn Nau, who runs a prison ministry for Faith Lutheran Church in Phoenix; Margaret Plews, a Phoenix activist who monitors treatment of prisoners; and Rep. Cecil Ash, a Republican lawmaker from Mesa who is involved in sentencing and correctional issues.

Ash said some of the letters he has received "really give me cause for worry ... that the state could have some serious lawsuits on its hands."

Many alleged incidents also suggest that often, denying basic care not only causes prolonged pain and suffering but makes it far more expensive once doctors treat the patients.

Carlos Archuleta, a Tucson inmate, said he begged repeatedly for help after being bitten in the groin by a spider last June. After four days, he was transported to a hospital for an emergency operation to remove infected fluid and tissue. Doctors had to resuscitate him after his heart stopped during the operation, and Archuleta was kept in the hospital six days.

"The doctor said if they'd left it one more day, he'd be dead. Just because they're inmates doesn't mean you should treat them this way," said his mother, Guadalupe Lopez. She added, "If he'd gotten proper medical care on day one, taxpayers wouldn't have had to pay for an emergency surgery and the hospital stay."

Corrections' spokesman Marson said "appropriate care was provided" to Archuleta.

The bottom line isn't just that prisoners, like anyone else, should have access to adequate medical care, said Caroline Isaacs, director of the American Friends Service Committee's Tucson office, which monitors state prisons. "Ninety percent of them will get out of prison, so treating HIV or hepatitis C or whatever they have prevents a public- health risk, or they'll get out and get on AHCCCS and we're paying for it anyway."

Billions Behind Bars: Resist ALEC.

Came across this editorial today that serves as a good reason to promote the ALEC Resistance in Scottsdale, November 29-December 3, 2011. Neither the National ACLU nor CNBC endorse (or even know about, as far as I can tell) this planned week of action...

AZ Resists ALEC

--------Catch this CNBC special on October 18-------

For-Profit Prisons: A Barrier to Serious Criminal Justice Reform

CNBC.com

Wednesday, 12 Oct 2011 | 2:26 PM ET

By: David Shapiro
Staff Attorney, ACLU National Prison Project

The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one — especially at a time when state governments confront enormous fiscal crises caused largely by bloated and unnecessary prison spending. But mass incarceration provides a gigantic windfall for one special interest group: the private prison industry. As current incarceration levels harm the nation as a whole, for-profit prisons obtain taxpayer dollars in ever greater amounts. Private prison executives, meanwhile, bring in multi-million dollar compensation packages.

Today, the United States incarcerates 2.3 million individuals — more people, both per capita and in absolute terms, than any other nation in the world including Russia, China and Iran. The current incarceration rate deprives record numbers of individuals of their liberty, disproportionately affects people of color and has at best a minimal effect on public safety. The crippling cost of imprisoning more and more Americans — non-violent offenders in the majority of cases — saddles governments with escalating debt.

This social ill — mass incarceration — is the private prison industry’s bread and butter. Private prison companies openly admit that their profits depend on locking up more people. For example, in a 2010 annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the largest private prison company stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by ... leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices ...”

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates. The number of inmates in private prisons increased by roughly 1600 percent between 1990 and 2009. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone took in nearly $3 billion in revenue, and their top executives each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

• Embrace Competition to Lower Costs, Improve Performance in Prisons

While the for-profit prison industry touts the idea that governments can save money through privatization, private prisons often fail to deliver demonstrable fiscal benefits — and can even cost taxpayers more than publicly operated institutions. Numerous studies by researchers, state governments and federal agencies contradict the supposed economic benefits touted by industry supporters.

As state governments across the nation confront deep fiscal deficits, the notion that private prisons demonstrably reduce the costs of incarceration is more than untrue — it is dangerous and irresponsible. Inflated assertions about cost savings threaten to lure states into privatization, rather than reducing incarceration rates and limiting corrections spending through serious criminal justice reform.

Empirical studies also show a heightened level of violence in some private prisons. With every incentive to slash salaries so as to maximize corporate profits, private prison companies in some instances fill their facilities with inexperienced staff. After an infamous escape from an Arizona private prison in 2010, for example, the Arizona Department of Corrections reported that at the prison “[s]taff are fairly ‘green’ across all shifts,” “are not proficient with weapons” and habitually ignore sounding alarms. Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a private juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, “[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine.”

Now is the time for serious criminal justice reform, not privatization schemes. The private prison industry feeds off the mass incarceration problem and cannot be part of the solution. The only real way to cut prison spending is to cut the number of people we keep in prison.

Shapiro is a Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. He litigates cases and engages in advocacy regarding prison and detention conditions, including immigration detention, access to information about prison conditions, the right of prisoners to communicate with the outside world and to practice religion, and the freedom from arbitrary body cavity searches. Prior to joining the ACLU, Shapiro worked as an associate at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he litigated First Amendment cases in federal trial and appellate courts, and served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Shapiro is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow, Russia. 

Watch the premiere of "Billions Behind Bars: Inside America's Prison Industry" Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 9pm, 10pm, 12am and 1am ET.

© 2011 CNBC.com

STOP SOLITARY: ACLU toolsite for activists.

Here are some resources on ending the abuses of solitary confinement from the ACLU National Prison Project:

Stop Solitary - Advocacy Campaign Tools

The ACLU, together with our state-based affiliates, scholars, activists, mental health experts, and faith-based organizations around the country, is engaged in a campaign to challenge the use of long-term solitary confinement – in the courts, in the legislatures, in reforms of correctional practice, and in the battle for public opinion. The goal of the Stop Solitary campaign is to limit and abolish the use of long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers.

• Stop Solitary – Quick Facts
• Stop Solitary Briefing Paper
• Getting Started – Collecting Corrections & Other Data in Your State
• Campaign Dos and Don’ts
• Model Social Networking Language
• Model Stop Solitary Legislation
• Model Fiscal Analysis Memo
• Checklist for a Visit to a Supermax Facility

• International Advocacy Tools
  
  
  • ACLU's Human Rights Council submission re: solitary confinement in US Prisons and Jails
  • NRCAT's request to the Special Rapporteur on Torture to investigate solitary confinement in the U.S.
  • Expert Report by Prof. Richard J. Wilson, K.C. v. Townsend, No. 6:09-CV-012, (N.D. Tex. August 31, 2009) (Customary International Law Applies and Supports U.S. Law to Bar or Limit Use of Certain Disciplinary Measure Taken Against Girls at Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex)

From Solitary Watch

(the best blog on Solitary Confinement there is)

For-profit prisons: The eggs in this basket are cracked.

How The Recession Hurts Private Prisons.

Newsweek

by Nancy Cook
June 30, 2010

America’s constantly booming prison population has seemed like a good business to be in, but even that is slowing with the economy.

Baldwin, Mich., (population 1,107), will soon have more prison beds than full-time residents. On the outskirts of town, one of the country’s largest private prison companies recently spent $60 million to expand a former juvenile prison into a 1,755-bed facility meant to house illegal immigrants before deportation. This is the same town where every summer locals gather for a carnival nicknamed Troutarama at which teenage girls vie for the crown of Ms. Lake County. Thirty-two percent of Baldwin’s families live below the poverty line, in a state with a 13.6 percent unemployment rate, compared to the national unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. Baldwin residents were counting on the private prison to create jobs, but this past March, the federal government pulled back its funding on the bid. This left the Geo Group, Inc., with an empty fortress in the middle of rural Michigan, 85 miles north of Grand Rapids.

A similar scenario is playing out across the country, in states such as California, Oklahoma, and Colorado, where entire private prisons now sit vacant. The Huerfano County Correctional Facility in Colorado and the Diamondback Correctional Facility in Oklahoma temporarily shut their doors this spring after the state of Arizona stopped sending prisoners out of state in an effort to save money. Cornell Companies, one of the three largest private prison operators in the U.S., expects two of its California prisons to remain empty through 2010, while 11,600 of Correction Corporation of America’s beds were unoccupied as of early May. The empty prisons are not a result of the number of inmates dropping. In fact, according to the Pew Public Safety Performance Project, the number of inmates rose in 2007 in Arizona, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Florida. Instead, the empty beds are because state corrections agencies are crowding prisoners into more facilities as they do in California, or trying to change legislation to make sentencing less harsh for nonviolent criminals. The private prison industry’s reliable mix of housing state and federal inmates and illegal immigrants—a model that helped to fuel two decades of growth—is no longer a surefire way to get rich. “There are only so many places you can find people,” says Martin F. Horn, a former commissioner with the New York City Department of Correction and a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Though it’s certainly not disappearing and there are signs of a potential recovery for the sector, the private corrections business is under financial pressure to change its business plan, and as that happens, prison advocates worry that the industry and it’s bottom-line approach will come to dominate other areas of the justice system. Rather than worrying about upping the number of inmates, private prison companies are tapping into overseas markets and offering a wider range of services. GEO increased its revenue by $20.2 million in the last year by opening up prisons in Australia and the United Kingdom, while also eyeing contracts in South Africa and New Zealand.

Cornell runs halfway houses and youth prisons and has noticed an uptick in the demand for drug treatment, housing, or job placement programs that help prisoners reenter society. “The challenge for reentry is funding,” says James Hyman, CEO and president of Cornell Companies. “If states can’t fund programs for their star college graduates, how do they fund programs for the prisoners?”

The private prison business experienced a similar watershed moment starting in the late 1990s and into early 2000. Shares of private prison companies then traded at roughly $2.50 (today, a share of GEO or CCA can easily sell for anywhere between $21 and $29), CCA also had thousands of empty beds, and the industry as a whole faced scandals over its treatment of prisoners. Twelve former prison guards in Texas had been indicted for sleeping with female prisoners, while a juvenile prison in Louisiana lost its contract after the U.S. Justice Department charged its guards with beating and throwing tear gas at the boys housed there. But two major events saved the industry. The Federal Bureau of Prisons saw an uptick in its number of prisoners (from 1987 to 2007, the national prison population tripled, from 585,084 to 1,596,127, according to a report by the Pew Center on the States), and then post-9/11, the Bush administration began to detain more immigrants and house them at a patchwork of private facilities across the United States.

The industry’s political connections have also likely helped ensure its longevity. The boards of directors for GEO and CCA read like a who’s who from past administrations and include both Republicans and Democrats. GEO board member Norman Carlson served as the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons for 17 years. CCA’s board boasts Thurgood Marshall Jr., former cabinet secretary to President Bill Clinton and son of the late Supreme Court justice, as well as former U.S. senator Dennis DeConcini, Democrat of Arizona, who, during his 18-year tenure in Congress, served on the judiciary and appropriations committees.

DeConcini says he has never lobbied on behalf of CCA, though he did, as a board member, attend a meeting with the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections and has publicly spoken in favor of the private prison business. During the 2008 election cycle, the political action committees of GEO, Cornell, and CCA, the three largest companies, were also generous, donating a total of roughly $679,000 to political groups and politicians from key states where they are courting new business, including Arizona, California, Louisiana, and Florida. “The private prisons companies know how to play the legislative game,” says Michael Jacobson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice.

As the economy recovers, both industry stock analysts and executives from Cornell and CCA say business is cylical and will rebound (GEO did not want to comment on the record). The private prison business now houses just under 9 percent of U.S. prisoners, compared to 6 percent in 2000, says Damon Hininger, president and CEO of CCA. Though it’s unclear where the new business will come from, Hininger points to several options. California’s budget crisis could actually prove to be a boon to business, since its prisons already are so overcrowded. The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently announced that it’s looking for a few thousand additional beds, and private prison executives argue that they operate 10 to 20 percent cheaper than state-run facilities, in part because they do not have to contend with the salaries and benefits of state correctional officers’ unions. (Corrections unions, for their part, say that makes the private prison guards less qualified and trained to deal with criminals and less prone to oversight.) “When I think about the future constraints on state governments, the fact that we can build quickly and cheaply only increases our value,” says Hyman of Cornell Companies.

The only part of the story left is the prisoners themselves. As David Fathi of the ACLU National Prison Project points out, “Prisoners cannot decide they don’t like where they live.” Because the private prison business does not follow the same rules as the rest of the market, in which consumers voice their preferences through what they buy, the question of how and where we house prisoners becomes merely an issue of economics. And for the private prison companies, the answer so far has been lucrative—as private prison executives are confident it will continue to be.

Find out more about the social and economic impact of America's prisons in our series. Read about the debate over whether cash-strapped states should cut classrooms or prison cells, and find out why we should treat drug addicts in prison.