Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility, a juvenile detention center in Mississippi had 1,225 prisoners. Cornell Companies operated the prison until August 12, 2010, when Cornell was bought by GEO Group, based in Florida.

In October 2010, United States Department of Justice officials informed Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour that the department had started a civil rights investigation concerning the prison, in relation to its treatment of prisoners, to assess whether constitutional standards of prisoner safety and humane treatment were being maintained.

In November 2010, plaintiffs represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project filed a federal class-action lawsuit against GEO (which had acquired Cornell and taken over its contracts in Mississippi and elsewhere) and MDOC, saying that the prison authorities allowed abuses and negligence to occur at WGYCF. The lawsuit stated that prison guards engaged in sexual intercourse with the prisoners, tolerated and encouraged violence, smuggled illegal drugs into the facilities, and that prison authorities denied required education and sufficient medical care. As of that month the prison had about 1,200 prisoners ages 13–22; the lawsuit said that half of the prisoners were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.By 2011 prisoners outnumbered Walnut Grove city residents by a 2:1 ratio. Two thirds of the prisoners had been convicted of non-violent offenses.

DOJ report – March 2012

The Justice Department Civil Rights Division delivered its March 20, 2012 report directly to the governor’s office and the court. It said that conditions at WGCF were “among the worst we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation,” characterizing both GEO and the MDOC’s lassitude as ignoring the safety of young inmates, allowing a denial of required health care, and hiring guards who were known to have gang affiliations. Press reports indicated the jail was run by gangs whose members included corrupt prison staff. The US Justice Department said that rapes of younger inmates was common.

The DOJ report said that the Walnut Grove Correctional Facility had “systematic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls”, and stated that sexual misconduct there was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”

Settlement and aftermath

Extensive testimony was heard in court related to the class action suit, including about the state’s oversight of the privately run prisons. The state’s Deputy Corrections Commissioner, Emmitt Sparkman, had testified in court hearings that the state lacked any authority to force GEO to upgrade security at the persistently short-staffed WGCF. He was questioned about the lines of authority for Mississippi corrections policy. “All we can do is make a request,” he said, adding GEO Group was “under no obligation” to provide sufficient staffing, according to the terms of its contract with the state. Judge Reeves found that state officials “repeatedly failed to monitor the contracts with GEO.”

Sparkman, who is now retired, had testified in federal court that the MDOC contracts at the time did not define requirements for standards of staffing. Judge Reeves asked him what incentives GEO had to ensure that inmates were properly supervised. Sparkman said, “It’s just standard terms of the agreement that they’re to provide a safe facility.” He continued, “Specific staffing requirements — no, sir, there’s not any in the agreement that we have right now.”

The US District Court, GEO Group, the state, and civil rights groups settled the federal class-action lawsuit with a court order dated March 26, 2012. In the court ruling, Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the Federal District Court wrote that an assessment of the WGYCF prison conditions “paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world,”…”a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.”

Operations at WGCF

On April 20, 2012, the State of Mississippi announced that it would end its contracts with the GEO Group, as required in the terms of the class action settlement. In contrast, GEO announced the change as its decision due to the “financially underperforming” character of the facility. The DOJ report noted that GEO Group had been investigated and strongly criticized during its management of the facility, and it failed to correct problems even after investigation started in relation to the 2010 class action suit. During the period of its contracts, GEO had donated more than $56,000 to Mississippi elected officials. Months after the settlement, reports of violence at the Walnut Grove prison continued.