Several Maine District Attorney’s offices say they’ll stop using a private prisoner-transport company after an investigation by the Lewiston Sun-Journal into allegations by a Lewiston woman, who was being brought from Florida to Auburn to face probation violation, that the company seriously mistreated her during the ride.
When Meghan Quinn reached Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn, where she’s now serving an eight-month sentence, she wrote a letter to the Lewiston Sun-Journal detailing her experience. Executive Editor Judith Meyer says the paper gets a lot of “jail mail,” but this letter had the ring of truth.
She and the investigation’s lead reporter Christopher Williams spoke to another prisoner who’d been on the transport, and who independently described the same treatment of Quinn. They looked at some of the issues with prisoner transport companies and the role they play in the corrections industry. And, along with William’s reporting, Meyer wrote two editorials on the subject that appeared in the Sun-Journal over the last two Sundays.
We spoke with Judith Meyer about their investigation of the ride – and the company.
Flaherty: Who is Meghan Quinn and how did she come to the attention of the Lewiston Sun-Journal?
Meyer: Meghan Quinn is a Lewiston woman who is incarcerated at the Androscoggin County Jail, and she sent us a letter about how she was treated in a transport from Florida to Maine. And we get a lot of jail mail, but hers stood out, because it was clear, it was organized, and it had a ring of truth to it that we felt was worth checking out.
Flaherty: So you did check it out, and you reported that Quinn was locked in the back of a van for five days as she was transported from Florida to Maine, under what you say were inhumane conditions. What happened to her during those five days?
Meyer: She was the only woman in a van full of seven other inmates, all the other inmates were men, and there was a protocol to keep the women separated. So she was locked in a cage that was basically the size of a dog crate – she wasn’t permitted to get out to use the bathroom, they fed her food through the cage wires.
So here’s this woman in a van with seven guys, she’s been forced to go to the bathroom in front of these guys; so at some point during the trip she decided to stop eating so she wouldn’t have to pull her pants down in front of these guys.
She’s a 34-year-old woman, and on the second or third day she got her period. And the van guards wouldn’t give her any sanitary napkins, and so she was laying basically in her feces and blood in this van, on the floor, with all these guys around her, for five days.
Flaherty: Tell us about the private company that transported her. Who are they, how often are they used in Maine and who regulates them?
Meyer: U.S. Prisoner Transport is the largest prisoner transport company in the country. They’re based out of Nashville, Tenn., and they are a for-profit company.
They basically take contracts with states all over the country to move prisoners long distances: For instance, in Maine, local deputies will do a one-day transport, but this company will do a long haul transport. (More on safety issues with prisoner transport companies here.)
Maine counties have used them for years, because they don’t have a lot of alternatives – they can’t send Maine deputies to Florida every day to pick prisoners up – so this company fills that niche.
Flaherty: And while a state or federal correctional facility would have intense regulation, that’s not true of U.S. Transport?
Meyer: There are very limited regulations. They’re doing the job of government, and they’re supposed to act like government, observing all the rights and responsibilities prisoners are entitled to. But this company doesn’t really seem to care about that: They’re moving as many prisoners as they can, as quickly as they can, to fulfill their contracts. Basically they’re unregulated, and they’re doing a job no one else wants to do. So they’re writing their own rules, really.
Flaherty: Why do DAs use this company – is it significantly less expensive?
Meyer: I don’t know if it’s significantly less expensive. But if you have a small department like Androscoggin County, and you have to transport somebody a long distance, that’s two fewer transport guys that you have in your department to work, and it just makes it a lot harder for smaller counties to manage that.
Flaherty: You’ve been in touch with U.S. Transport. How has the company responded to your attempts to reach them, and to your investigation?
Meyer: We sent requests to them for records, and because they are doing the work of government, the records that they produce in moving these prisoners are considered public record. But so far they have not responded.
We asked for these records through both Florida and Maine law, and although I did speak briefly with the president once, who said the request was with the attorney, we’ve never heard from them, and we’ve reached out I’d say more than a dozen times, to try to get some response from this company.
Flaherty: And they are supposed to respond to you under federal law.
Meyer: Yes, and I’ve looked at some of the federal lawsuits that have been filed against this company – they also declined to respond to federal requests for discovery information – and to federal judges’ requests. So, they’re not very cooperative, that’s for sure.
Flaherty: There have now been several district attorneys who have weighed in. What are they saying?
Meyer: Well, the DAs in Cumberland, York, Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin Counties have stopped using this company. And in fact, Cumberland had a pending contract with them last week, and canceled it even though it was in place because the treatment of Meghan Quinn was so awful.
I don’t know if they’re doing independent investigations, but they have sort of stepped back and said, ‘we’re not going to use this company anymore until we can be sure that they’re treating people the way our counties would treat them.’
DAs in Kennebec, Somerset and Aroostook Counties don’t use these private, for-profit transport companies, because they believe public agencies are better suited to transport inmates, and be guardians for them if they’re on the move. So good for Maine, more than half our counties don’t use these companies.
Flaherty: So how can they afford it?
Meyer: Good question – and part of it is maybe it’s not always about money – it’s about treating people right. I mean prisoners, I get it, they’re prisoners, and they do have rights to be treated humanely. We can’t treat them like animals. There has to be a judgment call on what is right just based on society’s norms.
Does it cost more? It may, but maybe it can cost less on certain transports. It would have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Meghan Quinn, I would say the cost was much too high to her, and to the men who were on the transport van, at least one of whom we’ve heard from, who said it was just awful to watch what she was going through.
Flaherty: Since your first report have you heard from any other prisoners who have been treated in a similar fashion? Any chance for a lawsuit or for further investigation into the company’s practices?
Meyer: We’ve heard from a number of people, who were transported from out of state to Maine, people who were transported from Maine to out of state, all over the country, who have similar stories to tell.
We heard from people who were physically injured: We heard from a guy who developed sepsis in his legs because the shackles were on too tight. We heard from a man who was on the van for 10 days, and by the time he got to his destination in Pennsylvania, his legs were black from the knee down from lack of circulation.
Some people have sued this company already, but there hasn’t been a lot of success there. I believe Meghan plans to sue this company, but that lawsuit hasn’t been filed yet. There do seem to be grounds, certainly, for getting this company’s attention and letting them know what they’re doing is not right.
This interview edited for clarity. Susan Sharon assisted in the production.
