Dying in Cell 40: State hired for-profit firm with rap sheet of death and lawsuits

[cali]

By Terry J. Allen on December 14, 2009


There are cracks in all our paths that can open onto disaster. Ashley Ellis seemed to trip into more than her share. Her 2007 car accident was just that, an accident. Her auto insurance had expired two days before, but she was not speeding or impaired when she got distracted by one of her dogs, and hit a man on a motorcycle. He suffered terrible injuries, was put on a ventilator, and is in a wheelchair.

Ellis’ own injuries emerged over time. “Ashley was horrified by what she had done,” said Sandra Gipe, Ellis’ grandmother. In the two years between the accident and her incarceration in the Northwestern Correctional Facility in Swanton, Ellis became a licensed nursing aide, and “took care of people on ventilators,” said Mary Kay Lanthier, her lawyer. “That was all she knew to do, since she couldn’t help the man she hit.”
Dig Deeper
Documents

* Department of Corrections 2007 contract with Prison Health Systems with four amendments (5.5MB)
* Investigation of seven inmate deaths
* 2004 Audit Report of the Department of Corrections
* Department of Corrections 2009 RFP for inmate care

She also dropped almost 40 pounds from her already thin 126-pound frame, and her eating disorder became so severe she sought treatment. With a suspended driver’s license, her local options were few, and her state health insurance would cover only 10 days hospitalization in a specialized center. At some point she developed a drug dependency, and the doctor performing her autopsy, according to the police report, found 17 cigarettes and some Suboxone pills (prescribed to treat opiate dependence) wrapped in electrical tape in her vagina.

But if Ellis was flawed and fatally unlucky, PHS and the Vermont Department of Corrections had their own problems. They knew the system was full of holes: From January 2008 to May 2009, PHS reported 169 sick-call and pharmacy violations system-wide, and Corrections imposed $19,200 in fines. From August — the month Ellis died — through October, Northwest alone racked up 43 additional penalties.

The contractor and the state were also unlucky. Other deaths under PHS have created only passing media ripples. But Ellis, a pretty young woman incarcerated on a misdemeanor, was an easy object of press attention and public sympathy.

“People admitted in newspaper comments,” says Vermont’s Defender General Matthew Valerio, “that ‘I wouldn’t give a damn’ if it had been a sex offender” who died.

This time, Vermonters wanted to know who to blame, and the prison nurses were the easiest target. “My analogy is guards at Abu Ghraib,” said Mary Kay Lanthier, Ellis’ lawyer. “Sure the LPNs bear responsibility, but there is a systemic problem.”

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http://vtdigger.org/2009/12/14/dying-in-cell-40-state-hired-for-profit-firm-with-rap-sheet-of-death-and-lawsuits/

[maryinthemorn]

1. Wisconsin Women's prison has the same horrible problem. The ACLU

has filed a law suit and a judge ordered the prison to engage in a number of actions to reform the system--but the State is fighting it.