State sheds little light on troubled prison transport firm
The security guard was a big guy of about 270 pounds, and 5-foot-10. The three other guards on the prison bus called him Abram. Over the course of a two-day bus ride through four states last fall, Abram wielded his authority over handcuffed and shackled prisoners, one prisoner recounted, sexually groping men.
“He rubbed up against me, touched me on my buttocks,” Woodrow Wilson, 58, of Detroit told Bridge. “I was handcuffed. I felt violated.”
The alleged abuse is outlined in a federal lawsuit Wilson filed in October against Prisoner Transportation Services of America, LLC, a private, for-profit company hired by the Michigan Department of Corrections to transport prisoners across states. Based in Nashville, Tenn., PTS is one of the largest private prisoner transportation companies in the nation and has been the subject of lawsuits, public scrutiny and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners.
At least four people have died nationally in PTS vehicles since 2012, according to the Marshall Project, a nonprofit, Pulitzer-Prize-winning news organization focusing on criminal justice, which this year investigated for-profit extradition companies in collaboration with the New York Times.
Read more: http://bridgemi.com/2016/11/state-sheds-little-light-on-troubled-prison-transport-firm/