By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2007

A D.C. prisoners' rights group claimed in a lawsuit yesterday that a private penitentiary contracted by the federal Bureau of Prisons has provided "grossly inadequate and inhumane" medical treatment to hundreds of District inmates in a quest to improve profits.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that prisoners at the Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, N.C., are routinely denied care or provided with inadequate treatment. A majority of the inmates at Rivers, 70 miles southwest of Virginia Beach, are from the District.

Keith Mathis, 32, a plaintiff in the class-action suit, said he asked to have an infected tooth pulled but received a filling instead. Over the next few months, the problem worsened, growing into an open sore and eventually requiring emergency surgery when his face "burst open," the suit alleges.

Mathis's case is one example of poor treatment alleged in the suit filed in the name of 10 current or former inmates against the Bureau of Prisons; its director, Harley G. Lappin; and the GEO Group Inc., which owns Rivers.

"There's one doctor for 1,300 patients," said Philip Fornaci, executive director of the D.C. Prisoners' Legal Services Project, which filed the suit. "We have been getting complaints from prisoners at Rivers for five or six years. In the last several months, we have been on-site verifying those complaints. They were so widespread that we decided to file suit to improve the situation."

District prisoners, as part of a deal with Congress cut a decade ago, are spread throughout the federal prison system. Some facilities are run by the federal prisons bureau. Others are operated by private firms that provide services, including health care, to inmates.

Fornaci said the Bureau of Prisons failed to provide oversight. "The contract itself actually encourages a skimpy use of medical resources to maximize profits," he said.

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond yesterday to the allegations.

John Bulfin, general counsel for the GEO Group, said the company had not seen the suit and could not comment until the allegations have been investigated.

Of the 199,000 inmates in the federal system, 20,900 are in private prisons. As of last week, 1,379 were at Rivers, nearly 1,000 of them District residents -- about 15 percent of D.C. prisoners in the federal system. Many of the inmates at Rivers are older than 40, with chronic health conditions.

Here are two examples from the suit:

· Inmate Charles Lewis, 57, the suit alleges, had suffered three heart attacks and two strokes. He had Bell's palsy diagnosed when he arrived at Rivers in May 2006. At the D.C. jail, Lewis received physical and speech therapy, treatment from specialists and proper medication. Once at Rivers, however, he had his back and knee braces confiscated. Therapy was discontinued. He was moved to a top-floor cell and top bunk, the suit alleges, increasing his chance of injury.

· An inmate identified as John Roe had depression and schizophrenia diagnosed, and he attempted suicide three times. He had chronic infections on his legs, a herniated disk and an ear infection. He has been denied medical care since arriving, the suit alleges.

"This is not the jail. You're not the community," the man was told, according to the suit. "This is a business."

Mark Corbett, 48, was incarcerated at Rivers from 2004 to 2006. In the criminal justice system since he was 12, Corbett served time at Lorton before it closed and in federal prisons in Connecticut, Michigan, New York and West Virginia.

He suffers from depression and has foot and dental problems.

At Rivers, he said, it was difficult to get an appointment with the doctor.

"Rivers was the worst one I have seen in my life," said Corbett, who is in the District looking for a job. "The nurses have a nasty attitude. They wouldn't give me an eye appointment. I had to virtually curse this man out to pull my wisdom tooth. . . . Some people do abuse the system and try to see the doctor every day, but [at Rivers] they take it out on everybody -- even those with serious illnesses."