2015 has been a big year for Corizon Health Services: in the span of six months, the nation’s largest for-profit inmate healthcare provider has managed to break not one, but two different state records for the largest wrongful death settlement payouts in history.

A new report by In The Public Interest (ITPI) illustrates how private companies that operate prisons or services within prisons use correctional associations to gain intimate access to decision makers in government — almost entirely off the books. Private companies pay millions of dollars each year to attend their conferences, lead trainings and workshops, give speeches, and advertise their products and services to law enforcement officials in attendance.

Inmate deaths in local jails and state prisons are on the rise for the third year in a row, according to a new study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report, released on August 4, found that the number of jailhouse deaths increased between 2012 and 2013 even though jail populations declined by 4% during that time.

Prison mistreatment may have given Oberist Saunders a staph infection after surgery, but under the privatized healthcare of Corizon Health Services, things got even worse, according to a lawsuit. Florida prisons have been home to some of the most horrific stories of inmate abuse and medical neglect and this lawsuit shows the harm caused by putting profit over patient health.

To launch Shadowproof but retain Firedoglake’s history, our tech team had to transfer approximately 4 million comments — ten years worth of conversations. The first Shadowproof Mailbag. Is your letter inside?

Timothy Strayer was approaching 70 years of age and suffering from multiple chronic illnesses in the summer of 2011 when he was arrested for marijuana possession with the intent to sell. One year later, his family launched a federal civil rights lawsuit that is still in progress to this day. This is the result of Shadowproof’s three month investigation of Advanced Correctional Healthcare and the Strayer family’s story.

On our Facebook, in response to Brian Sonenstein’s “Lawsuit: Corizon Doctor Tells New York City Inmate to Throw Severed Finger in Garbage,” Christine Robinett responded, “Sounds about right for the 98%, incarcerated or not. Far Too MANY doctors exploit their positions of authority as callous, bigoted, apathetic, even lazy towards