The private corporation, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), manages correctional facilities for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. On their web site they say:
MTC safely secures more than 31,000 offenders in eight states at 25 facilities. To ensure we operate the highest quality correctional facilities, MTC pursues nationally-recognized accreditations from the American Correctional Association, the Correctional Education Association, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care, and the National Commission of Correctional Health Care. In 2009, the MTC corporate office obtained American Correctional Association accreditation, becoming the first and only private operator to do so.
The corporation was founded by Dr. Robert L. Marquardt,Ph.D.,M.B.A.. He serves as as its President and as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Jane Marquardt,J.D.,L.L.M. serves as Vice-Chairman of the board. Looking at the Leaders on their website, I see that they have many people who have extensive experience with corrections and correction systems. However, something is missing. I am not able to find, at his time, financial information such as salaries, and their annual operating sheet detailing profits and loss or gains. I will continue to look for that information. Are they sacrificing the care of inmates for the bottom line? I don’t know, but there is evidence that the management they are providing is not adequate. There has been an ongoing history of problems with facilities they are overseeing. Most recently with the uprising by the prisoners at the Willacy County Correctional Center in Raymondville. Hundreds of the 2,800 prisoners started a riot at breakfast over what they cited as the poor medical care provided for the inmates.
The Blaze Feb 21, 2015 reported :
The large Kevlar tents that make up the facility were described in a 2014 report by the American Civil Liberties Union as not “only foul, cramped and depressing, but also overcrowded.”
The report said that inmates reported that their medical concerns were often ignored by staff and that corners were often cut when it came to health care.
Brian McGiverin, a prisoners’ rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said that he was not surprised inadequate medical care could ignite a riot. He said medical care is grossly underfunded in prisons, especially in ones run by private contractors.
“It’s pretty abysmal with regard to modern standards how people should be treated, pretty much anywhere you go,” he said.
This excerpt from Wikipedia details long standing problems with this correctional management company:
On October 25, 2003, a 90-minute prison riot broke out at MTC’s low-security Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility in Eagle Mountain, California Some 150 prisoners attacked each other with meat cleavers, broom handles, rocks, pipes, crutches and fire extinguishers. The privately employed guards retreated, according to the protocol, while state correctional officers were called in from other nearby state facilities.[7] Two inmates were stabbed to death, seven others were critically injured, and dozens more hurt. Eight inmates were ultimately charged with murder.[8] The facility was closed by the end of the year.
In November 2007, four MTC employees at the Willacy Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas were charged in relation to their use of company vehicles to smuggle illegal immigrants through checkpoints. They were allegedly caught smuggling 28 illegal immigrants through the U.S. Border Patrol’s Sarita checkpoint, situated approximately 100 miles north of Brownsville. The immigrants were from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Two of the men charged were wearing their uniforms and driving a company van, apparently overloaded with the immigrants.[9]
On 30 July 2010, three violent criminals escaped from the Arizona State Prison – Kingman after MTC workers ignored alarms indicating they had cut through the fence with tools tossed to them by a getaway car driver.[10] Two MTC employees resigned in the wake of the escape, a unit warden and a unit security chief.[11] On September 20, the Arizona Department of Corrections released a report which stated that the escape went undetected for an unknown period of time because the security system between the perimeter fences, which should have detected the prisoners passing through, had been incorrectly installed and had not worked properly for the past two and a half years.[12] Subsequently, corrections officials stopped sending new inmates to the facility, which they stated was “dysfunctional.” MTC threatened to sue the state for breach of contract, which guaranteed the facility 97% occupancy, and the loss of $10 million in revenue from empty beds. The state renegotiated the contract and paid MTC $3 million.[13]
On June 22, 2011, MTC Security Officer Edwin Rodriguez at the Willacy facility was arrested, and subsequently charged with the sexual abuse of a female detainee.[14][15][16][17][18][19]
In 2013, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the East Mississippi Correctional Facility (EMCF), operated by the MTC, which they described as an “extremely dangerous facility” where “basic human rights are violated daily.” The lawsuit claims that rats crawl over prisoners in their beds so often that sometimes they are captured, put on leashes and sold as pets to seriously mentally ill inmates.[20] Many prisoners have reportedly been unable to access appropriate medical care, even for life threatening conditions.[21][22]
In July 2014, a portion of an internal ceiling collapsed in a dayroom at the Diboll Correctional Center in Texas. A number of inmates were taken to the hospital. One was listed as being in critical condition.[23]
In November 2014, Christopher Epps, the state corrections commissioner in Mississippi, was arraigned on charges of organizing a massive corruption scheme in which he received $900,000 in bribes in exchange for lucrative contracts to private prison firms with ties to another former state official, including MTC. According to the indictment, the bribes occurred when the MTC-operated EMCF was descending into “hellish chaos” with gang violence routine, medical care substandard and corruption rampant among corrections officers.[24]
On January 19, 2015, 23-year-old inmate Neil Early died in Las Vegas after being fatally assaulted in MTC’s Kingman, Arizona, Golden Valley State Prison. A search of the prison turned up numerous weapons, illegal cell phones and a quantity of heroin. A guard working a 16-hour shift had been supervising 200 inmates at the time of the attack on Early.[25]
On February 21, 2015, inmates at the MTC “tent” prison in Willacy County, Texas rioted over issues such as poor medical care. The prison was rendered “uninhabitable” according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which had contracted with MTC to manage 2,800 inmates.[26]
I will be continuing my research into this and other private for profit corporations providing the management of our federal prisons.Remember, our children, siblings, spouses, significant others and friends are in these institutions serving their time.