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UKDS: How did Alton Manning die?

Alton Manning, a 33 year old black remand prisoner, died on 8 December 1995 at UK Detention Services-run HM Prison Blakenhurst in the English west Midlands. An inquest started in January 1998 but was adjourned before the coroner’s summing up at the request of UKDS lawyers who have applied to the High Court for a ruling. Reporting on the reason for the application is not allowed.That hearing will take place on 18 February 1998, after which the coroner’s inquest will be resumed. No date has been scheduled.

The coroner and the jury  heard that Mr Manning died after UKDS staff attempted a body search for drugs.  It also emerged in evidence that:

n A consultant forensic pathologist established that the cause of death was respiratory impairment/restriction during restraint leading to asphyxia. There was evidence of airway occlusion due to pressure to the neck and restriction of chest movement whilst on the ground with pressure applied to the back of the chest.

Mr Manning suffered  bruising to the neck, blood spots in the eyes, face and neck, and there was blood from the ear and mouth consistent with the occlusion of the airway.  Bruising found on his back was consistent with the application of a knee in that area. Eight separate visible areas of injury to the face, as well abrasions to the arms and legs, were noted.

The pathologist also confirmed that no drugs or alcohol were found in Mr Manning’s body.

n Crucial evidence from UKDS was missing. Prison cameras that would have recorded an unobstructed view of the last moments of Mr Manning’s restraint were said to have recorded nothing due to operational error. Staff reports containing the first written accounts of the event could not be found by UKDS when sought on behalf of Mr Manning's family.

n Five prisoners described how they saw Mr Manning being restrained in a neck hold that was wholly consistent with injuries to the neck and the cause of death as established by the pathological evidence.

n None of the eight staff who were directly involved in the restraint offered any explanation for the visible injuries or the cause of death.

n The two most senior staff involved ‑ one holding Mr Manning's head and the other  kneeling on his back ‑ claimed to be ignorant of Home Office guidance issued in August 1992 [the prison opened in May 1993] warning of the dangers of restraining prisoners in the prone position or applying pressure to the neck, chest or abdomen. But all the other officers accepted that they had received the relevant warnings during their training in control and restraint techniques at Blakenhurst.

According to INQUEST, a prisoners’ rights organisation supporting Mr Manning’s family, lawyers representing the Home Office and the company  worked as a team throughout the hearing with the assistance of the Treasury Solicitor and the Home Office’s Controller at Blakenhurst. Lawyers for Mr Manning’s family were denied access to much of the relevant documentation.

Deborah Coles, co-director of INQUEST, told PPRI that: “The evidence heard so far has been extremely disturbing. The jury will have to consider whether or not Mr Manning was unlawfully killed.”

UKDS is now owned by Corrections Corporation of America and Sodexho, although at the time of Mr Manning’s death, CCA’s partners were John Mowlem and Sir Robert McAlpine.The Blakenhurst contract is being renewed for a further three years from May 1998. UKDS was also recently awarded a 25 year contract to run HM Prison Agecroft at Salford, north west England For a full briefing on the Alton Manning case, contact:INQUEST, Tel++44 181 802 7430.Email:inquest@compuerve.com

 

 

UNITED KINGDOM

Big boost for industry?

    Twenty four new prisons at a cost of over £2bn plus £300m in annual running costs could be needed in England and Wales within the next seven years if the prison population continues to grow at its present rate. The Director General of the Prison Service warned in February  that, if existing sentencing patterns continue, the population could reach 82,000 - or 93,000 at worst.  The population is currently at 64,000, the highest level in modern history.

n Premier Prison Services Ltd’s latest prison, HM Prison Lowdham Grange in Nottingham, has opened amidst controversy. A proposed scheme for contracting with a number of firms to provide  employment for prisoners has been criticised by trade unions for allowing those companies to undercut existing local wage rates. The local employers’ association has welcomed the scheme as long as “it isn’t providing unfair and subsidised competition to local businesses and it develops the skill base of individuals.”

n Premier Prison Services Ltd (with construction firm Kvaerner) hopes to win a 25 year, £60m contract to finance, design, build and run a new prison at Marchington in Staffordshire. The facility will include a 200 place therapeutic community regime. The company’s bid rests on Wackenhut’s experience at the Kyle New Vision Facility in Texas which is run as a therapeutic community.

 

Alternative plan for industries

    Wackenhut UK Ltd’s contract to operate prison industries at HM Prison Coldingley is to be independently evaluated over two years. But Prison Service trade unions are still arguing that the Prisons Minister should reconsider the issue. The unions have recommended an alternative model for prison industries based upon the US Federal Government’s UNICOR system. More details from: Larry O’Callaghan, CPSA, c/o Room G30, Abell House, John Islip Street, London SW1P 4LH, England. Fax: ++ 44 171 217 5916.

 

First sponsored courts

    Companies such as pharmaceutical and medical firms are being asked to sponsor special drugs courts in the north of England when public funds run out. In April 1998, the Substance Misuse Treatment & Enforcement Programme (STEP) will begin piloting courts which will fast-track offenders through the judicial system. A similar  scheme operates in Miami, Florida. A STEP spokesperson told the Big Issue that the companies “will not have any clout and none of their representatives will be selected on the project board. Their involvement will be financial only.” Drugs charity Lifeline called the scheme “ill conceived”.

 

AUSTRALIA

 

Borallon breakout

    Three inmates used bolt cutters to escape from Corrections Corporation of Australia-run  Borrallon Jail, near Ipswich in Queensland on 2 February 1998. Three accomplices fired 27 shots from a rifle at a single prison officer in a perimeter vehicle.  The officer returned fire using a revolver and a shotgun. Queensland’s prisons minister is recommending that armoured vehicles be used to patrol all prison perimeters from now on. A new maximum security prison is also likely to be built.

n Queensland Corrective Services Commission has called for Expressions of Interest from companies who want to tender for a contract to design, construct and operate a new prison to replace the existing Rockhampton Correctional Centre. The new prison will be a  regional facility for male prisoners of all security categories

 

No private prison - magistrate

    Mr Brian Barrow, deputy chief magistrate at Victoria’s Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, has twice recommended that Aboriginal offenders were too vulnerable to serve any part of their sentences in a private prison. The Aboriginal Legal Aid Service Co‑operative believes that the magistrate’s recommendations reflect community concern about private prisons in general and recent deaths in custody in particular. However, Mr Barrow’s recommendations are not legally binding, as the corrections department  decides where an offender serves his/her sentence.

 

Escape from Fulham fishing trip

    A prisoner who escaped from a fishing party of eight  supervised by Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) staff from Fulham Correctional Centre in Victoria was on the run for six weeks and committed fifteen crimes before being recaptured in January. ACM has threatened the officer who supervised the trip with disciplinary action.

 

Victoria’s private police cells

     All cells in a new police, courts and correctional facility complex being built at Sunshine in western Victoria are to be privately run. The Police Minister has said that running cells is not a core activity and contracting out will give police more time to tackle crime in the area. Eventually, all police cells in the region will be privatised.

 

Pressure in Western Australia

    Western Australia has one of the fastest growing prison populations in the country with 171 per 100,000 population behind bars. Its incarceration rate is higher  than Victoria, which currently holds around 45 per cent of its prisoners in private prisons. Due to mandatory minimum sentencing the incarceration rate is expected to soar, increasing the need for a new prison. Finance has been allocated to plan one facility, but the Government has still to decide on public or private operation. Private companies are arguing that Western Australia  should have at least two new facilities.

 

TAIWAN

 

Privatisation recommended

    Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice is investigating the feasibility  of what the Minister, Mr Liao Cheng‑hao, refers to as prisons built and run under BOT [build, operate and transfer] contracts. The Minister believes that privately run facilities would help ease overcrowding in Taiwan’s prisons and save public money. At this stage he envisages only using private prisons for low risk offenders.

 

 

UNITED STATES

Conflict in Iowa

    Residents f Forest City, Iowa are campaigning to prevent the state’s first private prison being built.The city council has agreed to spend $360,000 connecting utilities to the site - owned incidentally, by a city councillor - on which CCA wants to build a prison. At a public meeting last year, residents voted 2-1 against the proposal. But since then an acrimonious war of words  has broken out in the newspapers, fuelled by full page advertisements from the company and Forest City Future Improvement Inc, which supports the prison plan on the basis of potential economic advantages.

Meanwhile, the No Prison campaign is pressurising the Iowa legislature to implement legislation which prohibits the building of any private prisons.

 

Capital leaves Texas

    Capital Corrections Resources Inc (CCRI) is selling its Texas prisons to CiviGenics Inc. Capital’s business has declined since revelations on a training video tape showed  guards at its Brazoria County Jail beating prisoners and setting dogs on them. Following the video’s release, Missouri and other states which sent prisoners to Capital’s Texas facilities, cancelled their contracts and transferred the prisoners elsewhere. CiviGenics operates private detention facilities in 13 other states.

 

Lawsuits in Tulsa

    The Oklahoma Sheriffs Association is seeking to join a lawsuit filed by a Tulsa County sheriff in a bid to prevent a new county jail being privatised. The original lawsuit claimed that it would be unconstitutional for the state to delegate power from an elected official to a private company. Since September 1997, the Criminal Justice Authority  has been negotiating with CCA to operate the jail. The Tulsa County Deputy Sheriffs Fraternal Order of  Police also has a lawsuit pending which claims that the Criminal Justice Authority was formed illegally and has no power over the  new jail.

n The State of Oklahoma’s first private prison at Hinton has been sold to Cornell Corrections Inc but Corrections Corporation of America will continue to operate the facility until July 1998. CCA’s 191 staff are being offered alternative employment by the company.

n Oklahoma will spend about $60m on private prison beds this year. The state began using private prisons in December 1995 when prison overcrowding had reached crisis levels. It now contracts with nine private prisons, three of which are in Oklahoma itself.

 

New Mexico wants to buy

    CCA has filed a lawsuit in the district court at Grants, New Mexico to try and prevent the state from buying the women’s prison which the company built and runs. The original contract allows the state the option to buy and the Governor  wants to either operate it directly or contract out the management and save around $3m a year. The Governor has budgeted $12.2m to buy the prison. CCA has operated the facility  since 1988. The contract was due for renewal in June 1997 and, although the state missed the renewal date, CCA has continued to receive  prisoners and payment. If CCA wins the case, the state could be forced to renegotiate a new contract and lease.

The state would also like to buy two prisons currently being built by Wackenhut but no provision has been made in the budget for the 1999 financial year. The Governor has said that, ideally, the state should own the prisons but the management could be contracted out. Wackenhut would agree to sell but only if they were allowed to run the facilities for at least five years.

Since 1980, New Mexico has been under a court order to improve prison conditions. Currently, the state sends hundreds of prisoners to Texas and Arizona.

 

Complaint under investigation

    Last July, the Florida Police Benevolent Association (FPBA), which represents Florida’s corrections officers, filed a complaint with the state’s Commission on Ethics,  alleging that there was a conflict of interest between Dr Charles Thomas’s role as an independent academic, his University of Florida Private Prisons Project being financed by corrections companies, his directorship of CCA Prison Realty Trust and his work for the Florida Commission on Privatisation. The FPBA has recently been informed that the complaint is now under active investigation but it is not known when the Commission’s  findings will be reported.

CCA’s REIT track

hen Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) wanted to build a prison in Youngstown, Ohio, the city  sold the company a 101 acre site for just one dollar, gave it a five year partial tax break, free utility connections and protection against losses and court damages. CCA spent $57m building the 2,016 bed Northeast Ohio Correctional Center. Then in July 1997 CCA sold the facility to its affiliated company, CCA Prison Realty Trust[a Real Estate Investment Trust, REIT] for $70m, making a $13m profit.

But only recently city officials have called into question CCA’s business practices, accusing the company of alleged profit-taking at the expense of local taxpayers.

The company argues that this [selling its own prisons] is “part of CCA's business strategy”.

In August 1997, analysts Legg Mason Wood Walker listed one of  the possible risks to Prison Realty Trust investors as the “... close ties between the management of CCA Prison Realty Trust and CCA. These ties could create conflicts of interest for [Realty Trust] management.”

The formation of CCA’s REIT last year was  heralded as the “third milestone in the corrections industry” by analysts. Its aim is to build new and acquire existing correctional and detention facilities from both private prison managers (including CCA) and public authorities and lease them back with a yield of 11 per cent. The rationale being that with prison overcrowding, increasing incarceration rates and lack of public funds for new prisons, the company could cash in on buying and financing publicly managed prisons.

CCA Prison Realty Trust can own correctional and detention facilities, but cannot manage the facilities it owns.  It currently owns thirteen, including five in Texas, two in Arizona, two in Oklahoma and one each in Tennessee, Kansas, Ohio and New Mexico. According to analysts Genesis Merchant Group Securities, there are  nine more CCA facilities in the pipeline at a cost of $390m and the company is “aggressively pursuing” other acquisitions.

The company has recently raised some $96.3m  through its sale of shares to help  finance this. The value of Prison Realty Trust shares has more than doubled since they were first offered for public sale in July 1997. So far only CCA has formed a corrections REIT but Wackenhut is also reported to be considering the idea.

n According to industry analysts Scott & Stringfellow, CCA’s prisons now form the sixth‑largest correctional system in the US  behind California, Texas, Florida, New York and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

 

Now Ohio wants control

    CCA’s Northeast Ohio Correctional Center at Youngstown - a sign outside the prison shows CCA’s daily share price - has had  numerous problems since it opened in May 1997. Following a series of stabbings, some of the 2,000 prisoners from Washington, DC, and Nevada have filed a lawsuit alleging unsafe conditions. State and local officials have also complained that they have no authority over the prison as the prisoners are from other states.

A proposal to introduce legislation which would  give Ohio authorities powers to oversee private prisons is being opposed by CCA. The regulations would set standards for prisoner care, clarify who is responsible for an inmate escape and allow local authorities to investigate any problems. Prison companies would have to adhere to guidelines such as the classification of prisoners permitted in the facility and to accept financial penalties if those requirements were unmet.

The legislation would also require the city of  Youngstown to negotiate a new contract with CCA. Some politicians are now saying that a percentage of private prison companies’ profits should be paid to the contracting authority. Youngstown’s Mayor, George McKelvey, says that he "will not be held hostage" to the possibility that jobs will be lost if the city “cracks down” on CCA’s operations.

n The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association is campaigning to prevent a second private prison  being built in Ohio. A 500 bed prison for offenders convicted of drink driving is being planned at Grafton.

 

Pittsburgh’s prison hospital

    Corrections National Corporation of Texas is proposing to build and run a 700 bed high security geriatric and special needs prison hospital in Pittsburgh. Federal, state and county prison authorities would pay for secure treatment as an alternative to sending prisoners to other  hospitals. The facility could be open in 1999.